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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75506 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Note
+  Italic text displayed as: _italic_
+
+
+
+
+  ASPHODEL
+
+  A Novel
+
+  BY THE AUTHOR OF
+
+  “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “ISHMAEL,”
+
+  ETC. ETC.
+
+  Stereotyped Edition
+
+  LONDON:
+
+  SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO., LIMITED,
+
+  STATIONERS’ HALL COURT
+
+  1890.
+
+  [_All rights reserved_]
+
+
+
+
+MISS BRADDON’S NOVELS.
+
+NOW READY AT ALL BOOKSELLERS’ AND BOOKSTALLS, PRICE 2_s._ 6_d._ EACH,
+CLOTH GILT.
+
+THE AUTHOR’S AUTOGRAPH EDITION OF MISS BRADDON’S NOVELS.
+
+
+“No one can be dull who has a novel by Miss Braddon in hand. The
+most tiresome journey is beguiled, and the most wearisome illness is
+brightened, by any one of her books.”
+
+“Miss Braddon is the Queen of the circulating libraries.”
+
+  _The World._
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  SIMPKIN & CO., LIMITED,
+  STATIONERS’ HALL COURT.
+  _And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers’, and Libraries._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAP.                                                           PAGE
+
+       I. ‘AND SHE WAS FAIR AS IS THE ROSE IN MAY’                     5
+
+      II. ‘AND THIS WAS GLADLY IN THE EVENTIDE’                       15
+
+     III. ‘AND VOLATILE, AS AY WAS HIS USAGE’                         25
+
+      IV. ‘CURTEIS SHE WAS, DISCRETE, AND DEBONAIRE’                  41
+
+       V. ‘THOU LOVEST ME, THAT WOT I WEL CERTAIN’                    52
+
+      VI. ‘LOVE MAKETH ALL TO GONE MISWAY’                            64
+
+     VII. ‘HIS HERTE BATHED IN A BATH OF BLISSE’                      78
+
+    VIII. ‘GOD WOTE THAT WORLDLY JOY IS SONE AGO’                     89
+
+      IX. ‘OF COLOUR PALE AND DEAD WAS SHE’                          101
+
+       X. ‘AND SPENDING SILVER HAD HE RIGHT YNOW’                    111
+
+      XI. ‘YEVE ME MY DETH, OR THAT I HAVE A SHAME’                  123
+
+     XII. ‘AND TO THE DINNER FASTE THEY HEM SPEDDE’                  133
+
+    XIII. ‘AFTER MY MIGHT FUL FAYNE WOLD I YOU PLESE’                144
+
+     XIV. ‘LOVE IS A THING, AS ANY SPIRIT, FREE’                     154
+
+      XV. ‘NOT FOR YOUR LINAGE, NE FOR YOUR RICHESSE’                165
+
+     XVI. ‘NO MAN MAY ALWAY HAVE PROSPERITEE’                        174
+
+    XVII. ‘AND IN MY HERTE WONDREN I BEGAN’                          184
+
+   XVIII. ‘LOVE WOL NOT BE CONSTREINED BY MAISTRIE’                  194
+
+     XIX. ‘I DEME THAT HIRE HERTE WAS FUL OF WO’                     205
+
+      XX. ‘AL SODENLY SHE SWAPT ADOWN TO GROUND’                     216
+
+     XXI. ‘FOR WELE OR WO, FOR CAROLE, OR FOR DAUNCE’                227
+
+    XXII. ‘FOR I WOL GLADLY YELDEN HIRE MY PLACE’                    239
+
+   XXIII. ‘AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY DAY OR NIGHT’                     250
+
+    XXIV. ‘AY FLETH THE TIME, IT WOL NO MAN ABIDE’                   260
+
+     XXV. ‘BUT I WOT BEST WHER WRINGETH ME MY SHO’                   271
+
+    XXVI. ‘FORBID A LOVE AND IT IS TEN TIMES SO WODE’                285
+
+   XXVII. ‘I MAY NOT DON AS EVERY PLOUGHMAN MAY’                     295
+
+  XXVIII. ‘LOVE IS NOT OLD, AS WHAN THAT IT IS NEW’                  305
+
+    XXIX. ‘I MEANE WELL, BY GOD THAT SIT ABOVE’                      319
+
+     XXX. ‘THER WAS NO WIGHT, TO WHOM SHE DURSTE PLAIN’              330
+
+    XXXI. ‘I WOLDE LIVE IN PEES, IF THAT I MIGHT’                    342
+
+   XXXII. ‘FOR LOVE AND NOT FOR HATE THOU MUST BE DED’               349
+
+  XXXIII. ‘IS THERE NO GRACE? IS THERE NO REMEDIE?’                  358
+
+   XXXIV. ‘SENS LOVE HATH BROUGHT US TO THIS PITEOUS END’            373
+
+
+
+
+ASPHODEL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+‘AND SHE WAS FAIR AS IS THE ROSE IN MAY.’
+
+
+‘Oh, you glorious old Sol, how I love you!’ cried Daphne.
+
+It was a day on which common mortals were almost fainting with the
+heat, puffing and blowing and complaining—a blazing midsummer-day;
+and even here, in the forest of Fontainebleau, where the mere idea
+of innumerable trees was suggestive of shadow and coolness, the heat
+was barely supportable—a heavy slumberous heat, loud with the hum of
+millions of insects, perfumed with the breath of a thousand pines.
+
+Daphne revelled in the fierce sunshine—she threw back her crest of
+waving hair, bright as yellow gold, she smiled up at the cloudless
+blue, she looked unwinkingly even at Sol himself, the mighty
+unquenchable king of the sky, glorious yonder in his highest heaven.
+
+She was lying at full length on a moss-grown block of stone at the
+top of a hill, which was one of the highest points in the forest, a
+hill-top overlooking on one side a fair sweep of champagne country,
+fertile valleys, church steeples, village roofs, vineyards and rose
+gardens, and winding streams; and on the other side, woodlands
+stretching away into infinite distance, darkly purple.
+
+It was the choicest spot in a forest which, at its best, is a poor
+thing compared with the immemorial growth of an old English wood. Here
+there are no such oaks and beeches as our Hampshire forest can show—no
+such lovely mystical glades—no such richness of undergrowth. Everything
+seems of yesterday, save here and there a tree that looks as if he had
+seen something of bygone generations, and here and there a wreck of an
+ancient oak, proudly labelled ‘The Great Pharamond,’ or ‘_Le Chêne de
+Henri IV._,’ with a placard hung round his poor old neck to say that
+he is not to be damaged ‘on pain of amend.’ Such Pharamonds and Henris
+abound in the forest where Rufus was killed, and nobody heeds them. The
+owls build in them, the field-mice find shelter in them, the woodpecker
+taps at them, unscared by placards or the threat of an amend.
+
+But in the Fontainebleau woods there are rocky glades which English
+forests cannot boast—wild walks between walls of gigantic granite
+boulders—queer shapes of monsters and animals in gray stone, which
+seem to leap out at one from the shadows as one passes; innumerable
+pine-trees; hills and hollows; pathways carpeted with red fir-needles,
+mosses, ferns, and wild-flowers; and a bluer brighter sky than the
+heaven which roofs an English landscape.
+
+‘Isn’t this worlds better than Asnières?’ asked Daphne of her
+companion; ‘and aren’t you ever so grateful to those poor girls for
+catching scarlet-fever?’
+
+Asnières was school and constraint, Fontainebleau was liberty; so if
+the forest had been a poorer place, Daphne, who hated all restraints,
+would have loved it.
+
+‘Poor girls!’ sighed Martha Dibb, a stupid, honest-minded young person,
+whose father kept an Italian warehouse in New Oxford street, and whose
+mother had been seized with the aspiration to have her daughters
+finished at Continental schools; whereby one Miss Dibb was being
+half-starved upon sausage and cabbage at Hanover, while the other grew
+fat upon _croûte au pot_ and _bouilli_ in the neighbourhood of Paris,
+and was supposed to be acquiring the true Parisian accent. ‘Poor girls;
+it was very bad for them,’ sighed Martha.
+
+‘Yes; but it was very good for us,’ answered Daphne lightly; ‘and if
+it was a part of their destiny to have scarlet-fever, how very nice
+of them to have it in the term instead of in the holidays, when we
+shouldn’t have profited by it.’
+
+‘And how lucky that we had that good-natured Miss Toby sent with us
+instead of one of the French governesses.’
+
+‘Lucky, indeed!’ cried Daphne, with her bright laugh. ‘That good simple
+Toby, with whom we can do exactly what we like, and who is the image of
+quiet contentment, so long as she has even the stupidest novel to read,
+and some acid-drops to suck. I tremble when I think of the amount of
+acid-drops she must consume in the course of a year.’
+
+‘Why do you give her so many?’ asked the practical Martha.
+
+‘They are my peace-offerings when I have been especially troublesome,’
+said Daphne, with the air of a sinner who glories in her
+troublesomeness. ‘Poor dear old Toby! if I were to give her a block of
+sweetstuff as tall as King Cheops’s pyramid, it wouldn’t atone for the
+life I lead her.’
+
+‘I hope she won’t get into trouble with Madame for letting us run wild
+like this,’ suggested Miss Dibb doubtfully.
+
+‘How should Madame know anything about it? And do you think she
+would care a straw if she did?’ retorted Daphne. ‘She will get paid
+exactly the same for us whether we are roaming at large in this lovely
+old forest, or grinding at grammar, and analysis, and Racine, and
+Lafontaine in the stuffy school-room at Asnières, where the train
+goes shrieking over the bridge every half-hour carrying happy people
+to Paris and gaiety, and theatres and operas, and all the good things
+of this life. What does Madame Tolmache care, so long as we are out of
+mischief? And I don’t see how we can get into any mischief here, unless
+that lovely green lizard we saw darting up the gray rock just now
+should turn into an adder and sting us to death.’
+
+‘If Miss Toby hadn’t a headache we couldn’t have come out without her,’
+said Martha musingly.
+
+‘May Toby and her headache flourish! If she had been well enough to
+come with us we should have been crawling along the dusty white road at
+the edge of the forest, and should never have got here. Toby has corns.
+And now I am going to sketch,’ said Daphne in an authoritative tone.
+‘You can do your crochet: for I really suppose now that to you and a
+certain class of intellects there is a kind of pleasure to be derived
+from poking an ivory hook into a loop of berlin wool and pulling it out
+again. But please sit so that I can’t see your work, Dibb dear. The
+very look of that fluffy wool on this hot day almost suffocates me.’
+
+Daphne produced her drawing-block and opened her colour-box, and
+settled herself in a half-recumbent position on the great granite
+slab, and surveyed the wide landscape below her with that gaze of calm
+patronage which the amateur artist bestows on grand, illimitable,
+untranslatable Nature. She looked across the vast valley, with its
+silver streak of river and its distant spires, its ever varying lights
+and shadows—a scene which Turner would have contemplated with awe and a
+sense of comparative impotence; but which ignorance, as personified by
+Daphne, surveyed complacently, wondering where she should begin.
+
+‘I think it will make a pretty picture,’ she said, ‘if I can succeed
+with it.’
+
+‘Why don’t you do a tree, or a cottage, or something, as the
+drawing-master said we ought to do—just one simple little thing that
+one could draw correctly?’ asked Martha, who was provokingly well
+furnished with the aggravating quality of commonsense.
+
+‘Drawing-masters are such grovellers,’ said Daphne, dashing in a faint
+outline with her facile pencil. ‘I would rather go on making splendid
+failures all my life than creep along the dull path of mediocre merit
+by the lines and rules of a drawing-master. I have no doubt this is
+going to be a splendid failure, and I shall do a devil’s dance upon it
+presently, as Müller used in the woods near Bristol, when he couldn’t
+please himself. But it amuses one for the moment,’ concluded Daphne,
+with whom life was all in the present, and self the centre of the
+universe.
+
+She splashed away at her sky with her biggest brush, sweeping across
+from left to right with a wash of cobalt, and then began to edge off
+the colour into ragged little clouds as the despised drawing-master had
+taught her. There was not a cloud in the hot blue sky this midsummer
+afternoon, and Daphne’s treatment was purely conventional.
+
+And now she began her landscape, and tried with multitudinous dabs of
+gray, and green, and blue, Indian red, and Italian pink, ochre, and
+umber, and lake, and sienna, to imitate the glory of a fertile valley
+basking in the sun.
+
+The colours were beginning to get into confusion. The foreground and
+the distance were all on one plane, and Daphne was on the point of
+flinging her block on the red sandy ground, and indulging in the luxury
+of a demon-dance upon her unsuccessful effort, when a voice behind her
+murmured quietly: ‘Give your background a wash of light gray, and fetch
+up your middle-distance with a little body colour.’
+
+‘Thanks awfully,’ replied Daphne without looking round, and without the
+faintest indication of surprise. Painters in the forest were almost as
+common as gadflies. They seemed indigenous to the soil. ‘Shall I make
+my pine-trunks umber or Venetian red?’
+
+‘Neither,’ answered the unseen adviser. ‘Those tall pine-stems are
+madder-brown, except where the shadows tint them with purple.’
+
+‘You are exceedingly kind,’ said Daphne, stifling a yawn, ‘but I don’t
+think I’ll go on with it. I am so obviously in a mess; I suppose nobody
+but a Turner ought to attempt such a valley as that.’
+
+‘Perhaps not. Linnell or Vicat Cole might be able to give a faint idea
+of it.’
+
+‘Linnell!’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I thought he painted nothing but
+wheat-fields, and that his only idea of Nature was a blaze of yellow.’
+
+‘Have you seen many of his pictures?’
+
+‘One. I was taken to the Academy last year.’
+
+‘Were you very pleased with what you saw?’
+
+‘Delighted—with the gowns and bonnets. It was a Saturday afternoon in
+the height of the season, and I plead guilty to seeing very little of
+the pictures. There were always people in the way, and the people were
+ever so much more interesting than the paintings.’
+
+‘What picture can compare with a well-made gown or the latest invention
+in bonnets?’ exclaimed the unknown with good-humoured irony.
+
+Daphne hacked the spoiled sheet off her block with a dainty little
+penknife, and looked at the daub longingly, wishing that the stranger
+would depart and leave her free to execute a _pas seul_ upon her
+abortive effort. But the stranger seemed to have no idea of departure.
+He had evidently settled himself behind her, on a camp-stool, or a
+rock, or some kind of seat; and he meant to stay.
+
+She had not yet seen his face. She liked his voice, which was of the
+baritone order, full, and round, and grave, and his intonation was that
+of a man who had lived in what the world calls Society. It might not
+be the best possible intonation—since orators and great preachers and
+successful actors have another style—but it was the tone approved by
+the best people, and the only tone that Daphne liked.
+
+‘A drawing-master, no doubt,’ she thought, ‘whose manners have been
+formed in decent society.’
+
+She wiped her brushes and shut her colour-box, with languid
+deliberation, not yet feeling curious enough to turn and inspect
+the stranger, although Martha Dibb was staring at him open-mouthed,
+as still as a stone, and the image of astonishment. Daphne augured
+from that gaping mouth of Martha’s that the unknown must be somewhat
+eccentric in appearance or attire, and began to feel faintly
+inquisitive.
+
+She rose from her recumbent attitude on the rock, drew herself as
+straight as an arrow, shook out her indigo-coloured serge petticoat,
+from beneath whose hem flashed a pair of scarlet stockings and neat
+buckled shoes, shook loose her mane of golden-bright hair, and looked
+deliberately round at Nature generally—the woods, the rocks, the
+brigand’s cave yonder, and the stalls where toys and trifles in carved
+wood were set out to tempt the tourist—and finally at the stranger. He
+lounged at his ease on a neighbouring rock, looking up at her with a
+provokingly self-assured expression. Her supposition had been correct,
+she told herself. He evidently belonged to the artistic classes—a
+drawing-master, or a third-rate water-colour painter—a man whose little
+bits of landscape or foreign architecture would be hung near the floor,
+and priced at a few guineas in the official list. He was a Bohemian
+to the tips of his nails. He wore an old velveteen coat—Daphne was
+not experienced enough to know that it had been cut by a genius among
+tailors—a shabby felt hat lay on the grass beside him; every one of his
+garments had seen good service, even to the boots, whose neat shape
+indicated a refinement that struggled against adverse circumstances. He
+was young, tall, and slim, with long slender fingers, and hands that
+looked artistic without looking effeminate. He had dark brown hair cut
+close to a well-shaped head, a dark brown moustache shading a sensitive
+and somewhat melancholy mouth. His complexion was pale, inclining to
+sallowness, his nose well formed, his forehead broad and low. His eyes
+were of so peculiar a colour that Daphne was at first sorely perplexed
+as to whether they were brown or blue, and finally came to the
+conclusion that they were neither colour, but a variable greenish-gray.
+But whatever their hue she was fain to admit to herself that the eyes
+were handsome eyes—far too good for the man’s position. Something of
+their beauty was doubtless owing to the thick dark lashes, the strongly
+marked brows. Just now the eyes, after a brief upward glance at Daphne,
+who fairly merited a longer regard, were fixed dreamily on the soft
+dreamlike landscape—the sun-steeped valley, the purple distance. It was
+a day for languorous dreaming; a day in which the world-worn soul might
+slip off the fetters of reality and roam at large in shadowland.
+
+‘Dibb,’ said Daphne, ever so slightly piqued at the unknown’s absent
+air, ‘don’t you think we ought to be going home? Poor dear Miss Toby
+will be anxious.’
+
+‘Not before six o’clock,’ replied the matter-of-fact Martha. ‘You told
+her with your own lips that she wasn’t to expect us before six. And
+what was the good of our carrying that heavy basket if we are not to
+eat our dinner here?’
+
+‘You have brought your dinner!’ exclaimed the stranger, suddenly waking
+from his dream. ‘How very delightful! Let us improvise a picnic.’
+
+‘The poor thing is hungry,’ thought Daphne, rather disappointed at what
+she considered a low trait in his character.
+
+Martha, with her face addressed to Daphne, began to distort her
+countenance in the most frightful manner, mutely protesting against the
+impropriety of sharing their meal with an unknown wanderer. Daphne, who
+was as mischievous as Robin Goodfellow, and doated on everything that
+was wrong, laughed these dumb appeals to scorn.
+
+‘The poor thing shall be fed,’ she said to herself. ‘Perhaps he has
+hardly a penny in his pockets. It will be a pleasure to give him a good
+meal and send him on his way rejoicing. I shall feel as meritorious as
+the Good Samaritan.’
+
+‘Is this the basket?’ asked the painter, pouncing upon the beehive
+receptacle which Martha had been hugging for the last five minutes. ‘Do
+let me be useful. I have a genius for picnics.’
+
+‘I never heard of such impertinence!’ ejaculated Miss Dibb inwardly;
+and then she began to wonder whether the valuable watch and chain
+which her father had given her on her last birthday were safe in such
+company, or whether her earrings might not be suddenly wrenched out of
+her ears.
+
+And there was that reckless Daphne, who had not the faintest notion
+of propriety, entering into the thing eagerly as a capital joke, and
+making herself as much at home with the nameless intruder as if she had
+known him all her life.
+
+Miss Dibb had been Daphne’s devoted slave for the last two years, had
+admired her and believed in her, and fetched and carried for her,
+and had been landed in all manner of scrapes and difficulties by her
+without a murmur; but she had never been so near revolt as at this
+moment, when her deep-rooted, thoroughly British sense of propriety
+was outraged as it had never in all Daphne’s escapades been outraged
+before. A strange man, fairly well-mannered it is true, but shabbily
+clad, was to be allowed to hob and nob in a place of public resort with
+two of Madame Tolmache’s young ladies.
+
+Martha looked despairingly round, as if to see that help was nigh. They
+were not alone in the forest. This hill side at the top of the rocky
+walk was a favourite resort. There were stalls for toys and stalls for
+refreshments close at hand. There were half-a-dozen groups of idle
+people enjoying themselves under the tall pines and in the shadow of
+the big blue-gray rocks. The mother of one estimable family had taken
+off her boots, and was lying at full length, with her stockings exposed
+to the libertine gaze of passers-by. Some were eating, some were
+sleeping. Children with cropped heads, short petticoats, and a great
+deal of stocking, were flying gaudy-coloured air-balls, and screaming
+at each other as only French children can scream. There was not the
+stillness of a dense primeval wood, the awful solitude of the Great
+Dismal Swamp. The place was rather like a bit of Greenwich Park or
+Hampstead Heath on a comparatively quiet afternoon in the middle of the
+week.
+
+Miss Dibb took heart of grace, and decided that her watch and earrings
+were safe. It was only her character that was likely to suffer. Daphne
+was dancing about among the rocks all this time, spreading a damask
+napkin on a smooth slab of granite, and making the most of the dinner.
+Her red stockings flashed to and fro like fireflies. She had a scarlet
+ribbon round her neck, and the dark serge gown was laced up the back
+with a scarlet cord, and, with her feathery hair flying loose and
+glittering in the sun, she was as bright a figure as ever lit up the
+foreground of a forest scene.
+
+The unknown forgot to be useful, and sat on his granite bench lazily
+contemplating her as she completed her preparations.
+
+‘What an idle person you are!’ she exclaimed, looking up from her task.
+‘Tumbler!’
+
+He explored the basket and produced the required article.
+
+‘Thanks. Corkscrew! Don’t run away with the idea that you are going to
+have wine. The corkscrew is for our lemonade.’
+
+‘You needn’t put such a selfish emphasis on the possessive pronoun,’
+said the stranger. ‘I mean to have some of that lemonade.’
+
+Daphne surveyed the banquet critically, with her head on one side. It
+was not a stupendous meal for two hungry school-girls and an unknown
+pedestrian, whom Daphne supposed to have been on short commons for
+the last week or two. There was half a roasted fowl—a fowl who in his
+zenith had no claim to be considered a fine specimen, and who seemed
+to have fallen upon evil days before he was sacrificed, so gaunt was
+his leg, so shrunken his wing, so withered his breast; there were some
+thin slices of carmine ham, with a bread-crumby edge instead of fat.
+Of one thing there was abundance, and that was the staff of life. Two
+long brown loaves—the genuine _pain de ménage_—suggested a homely kind
+of plenty. For dessert there was a basket of wood-strawberries, a thin
+slab of Gruyère, and some small specimens of high-art confectionery,
+more attractive to the eye than the palate.
+
+‘Now, Dibb dear, grace, if you please,’ commanded Daphne, with a
+mischievous side-glance at the unknown.
+
+That French grace of poor Martha’s was a performance which always
+delighted Daphne, and she wanted the wayfarer to enjoy himself. The
+‘ongs’ and ‘dongs’ were worth hearing. Gravely the submissive Martha
+complied, and with solemn countenance asked a blessing on the meal.
+
+‘You can have all the fowl,’ said Daphne to her guest; ‘Martha and I
+like bread and cheese ever so much better.’
+
+She tore one of the big brown loaves in two, tossed one half to Martha,
+and broke a great knob off the other for her own eating, attacking it
+ravenously with her strong white teeth.
+
+‘You are more than good,’ replied the stranger with his pleasantly
+listless air, as if there were nothing in life worth being energetic
+about; ‘you are actually self-sacrificing. But, to tell you the honest
+truth, I have not the slightest appetite. I had my second breakfast at
+one o’clock, and I had much rather carve that elderly member of the
+feathered tribe for you than eat him. I wish he were better worthy of
+your consideration.’
+
+Daphne looked at him doubtfully, unconvinced.
+
+‘I know you’re disparaging the bird out of kindness to us,’ she said;
+‘you might just as well eat a good luncheon. Martha and I adore bread
+and cheese.’
+
+She emphasised this assertion with a stealthy frown at poor Miss
+Dibb, who saw her dinner thus coolly confiscated for the good of a
+suspicious-looking interloper.
+
+‘You doat upon Gruyère, don’t you, Martha?’ she demanded.
+
+‘I like it pretty well,’ answered Miss Dibb sulkily; ‘but I think the
+holes are the nicest part.’
+
+The stranger was cutting up the meagre fowl, giving the wing and
+breast to Daphne, the sinewy leg to Martha, who was the kind of girl
+to go through life getting the legs of fowls and the back seat in
+opera-boxes, and the worst partners at afternoon dances.
+
+Finding the unknown inflexible, and being herself desperately hungry,
+Daphne ended by taking her share of the poultry, while her guest ate a
+few strawberries and munched a crust of bread, lying along the grass
+all the while, almost at her feet. It was a new experience, and the
+more horrified Martha looked the more Daphne enjoyed it.
+
+What was life to her but the present hour, with its radiant sun and
+glad earth flushed with colour, the scent of the pines, the hum of the
+bees, the delight of the butterflies flashing across the blue? Utterly
+innocent in her utter ignorance of evil, she saw no snare in such
+simple joys, she had no premonition of danger. Her worst suspicion of
+the stranger was that he might be poor. That was the only social crime
+whereof she knew. And the more convinced she felt of his poverty, the
+more determined she was to be civil to him.
+
+He lay at her feet, on a carpet of fir-needles, looking up at her with
+an admiration almost as purely artistic as that which he had felt an
+hour ago for a green and purple lizard which he had caught asleep on
+one of the rocks, and which had darted up a sheer wall of granite,
+swift as a sun-ray, at the light touch of his finger-tip. With a love
+of the beautiful almost as abstract as that which he had felt for the
+graceful curves and rainbow tints of the lizard, he lay and basked in
+the light of this school-girl’s violet eyes, and watched the play of
+sunbeam and shadow on her golden hair. To him, too, the present hour
+was all in all—an hour of sunlight and perfume and balmiest atmosphere,
+an hour’s sweet idleness, empty of thought and care.
+
+The face he looked at was not one of those perfect faces which
+would bear to be transfixed in marble. It was a countenance whose
+chief beauty lay in colour and expression—a face full of variety;
+now whimsically gay, now pouting, now pert; anon suddenly pensive.
+Infinitely bewitching in some phases, it was infinitely provoking in
+others; but, under all conditions, it was a face full of interest.
+
+The complexion was brilliant, the true English red and white; no
+ivory-pale beauty this, with the sickly tints of Gibson’s painted
+Venus, but the creamy fairness and the vivid rose of health, and youth,
+and happiness. The eyes were of darkest gray, that deep violet which,
+under thick dark lashes, looks black as night. The nose was short and
+_retroussé_, nothing to boast of in noses; the mouth was a trifle wide,
+but the lips were of loveliest form and richest carmine, the teeth
+flashing beneath them absolutely perfect. Above those violet eyes
+arched strongly-marked brows of darkest brown, contrasting curiously
+with the thick fringe of golden hair. Altogether the face was more
+original in its beauty than any which the stronger had looked upon for
+a long time.
+
+‘Have you any sketches to show us?’ asked Daphne when she had finished
+her dinner.
+
+‘No; I have not been sketching this morning; and if I had done anything
+I doubt if it would have been worth looking at. You must not suppose
+that I am a grand artist. But if you don’t mind lending me your block
+and your colour-box for half an hour I should like to make a little
+sketch now.’
+
+‘Cool,’ thought Daphne. ‘But calm impudence is this gentleman’s leading
+characteristic.’
+
+She handed him block and box with an amused smile.
+
+‘Are you going to paint the valley?’ she asked.
+
+‘No; I leave that for a new Turner. I am only going to try my hand at a
+rock with a young lady sitting on it.’
+
+‘I’m sure Martha won’t mind being painted,’ replied Daphne, with a
+mischievous glance at Miss Dibb, who was sitting bolt upright on
+her particular block of granite, the image of stiffness and dumb
+disapproval. She was a thick-set girl with sandy hair and freckles, not
+bad-looking after her homely fashion, but utterly wanting in grace.
+
+‘I couldn’t think of taking such a liberty with Miss Martha,’
+returned the stranger; ‘the freemasonry of art puts me at my ease
+with you. Would you mind sitting quiet for half an hour or so? That
+semi-recumbent position will do beautifully.’
+
+He sketched in rock and figure as he spoke, with a free facile touch
+that showed a practised hand.
+
+‘I’m sure you can paint beautifully,’ said Daphne, watching his pencil
+as he sat a little way off, glancing up at her every now and then.
+
+‘Wait till you see how I shall interpret your lilies and roses. I ought
+to be as good a colourist as Rubens or John Phillip to do you justice.’
+
+She had fallen into a reposeful attitude after finishing her meal, her
+arms folded on the rock, her head resting on the folded arms, her eyes
+gazing sleepily at the sunlit valley in front of her, one little foot
+pendent from the edge of the greenish gray stone, the other tucked
+under her dark blue skirt, a mass of yellow tresses falling over one
+dark blue shoulder, and a scarlet ribbon fluttering on the other.
+
+Martha Dibb looked more and more horrified. Could there be a lower deep
+than this? To sit for one’s portrait to an unknown artist in a shabby
+coat. The man was unquestionably a vagabond, although he did not make
+havoc of his aspirates like poor dear papa; and Daphne was bringing
+disgrace on Madame Tolmache’s whole establishment.
+
+‘Suppose I should meet him in Regent Street one day after I leave
+school, and he were to speak to me, what would mamma and Jane say?’
+thought Miss Dibb.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+‘AND THIS WAS GLADLY IN THE EVENTIDE.’
+
+
+Daphne was as still as a statue, her vanity gratified by this homage
+to her charms. There had been nobody to admire her at Asnières but the
+old music-master, into whose hat she had sometimes put a little bouquet
+from the trim suburban garden, or a spray of acacia from the grove that
+screened the maiden meditations of Madame Tolmache’s pupils from the
+vulgar gaze of the outside world. She retained her recumbent attitude
+patiently for nearly an hour, half asleep in the balmy afternoon
+atmosphere, while the outraged Martha sat on her rock apart, digging
+her everlasting crochet-hook into the fluffy mass of wool, and saying
+never a word.
+
+The stranger was nearly as silent as Martha. He was working
+industriously at his sketch, and smoking his cigar as he worked, having
+first ascertained that the ladies were tolerant of the weed. He painted
+in a large dashing style that got over the ground very quickly, and
+made a good effect. He had nearly finished his sketch of the figure
+on the rock—the indigo gown, scarlet ribbon, bright hair, and dark
+luminous eyes, when Daphne jumped up suddenly, and vowed that her every
+limb was an agony to her.
+
+‘I couldn’t endure it an instant longer!’ she exclaimed. ‘I hope you’ve
+finished.’
+
+‘Not quite; but you may change your attitude as much as you like if
+you’ll only keep your head the same way. I am working at the face now.’
+
+‘What are you going to do with the picture when it’s finished?’
+
+‘Keep it till my dying day.’
+
+‘I thought you would perhaps give it—I mean sell it—to me. I could not
+afford a large price, for my people are very poor, but——’
+
+‘Your looking-glass will show you a better portrait than this poor
+sketch of mine. And, in after years, even this libellous daub will
+serve to remind me of a happy hour in my life.’
+
+‘I am glad you have enjoyed yourself,’ said Daphne; ‘but I really wish
+you had eaten that fowl. Have you far to go home to dinner?’
+
+‘Only to Fontainebleau.’
+
+‘You are living there?’
+
+‘I am staying there. I may strike my tent and be across the Jura
+to-morrow night. I never live anywhere.’
+
+‘But haven’t you a home and people?’
+
+‘I have a kind of home, but no people.’
+
+‘Poor fellow!’ murmured Daphne, with exquisite compassion. ‘Are you an
+orphan?’
+
+‘Yes; my father died nine years ago, my mother last year.’
+
+‘How awfully sad! No brothers or sisters?’
+
+‘None. I am a crystallisation, the last of a vanishing race. And now
+I have done as much as I dare to your portrait. Any attempt at finish
+would result in failure. I am writing the place and the date in the
+corner of my sketch. May I write your name?’
+
+‘My name!’ exclaimed Daphne, her eyes sparkling with mischief, her
+cheeks curving into dimples.
+
+‘Yes; your name. You have a name, I suppose: unless you are the
+nameless spirit of sunlit woodlands, masquerading in a blue gown?’
+
+‘My name—is—Poppæa,’ faltered Daphne, whose latest chapter of Roman
+history had been the story of Nero and his various crimes, toned down
+and expurgated to suit young ladies’ schools.
+
+Poppæa Sabina, thus chastely handled, had appeared nothing worse than
+a dressy lady of extravagant tastes, who took elaborate care of her
+complexion, and had a fancy for shoeing her mules with gold.
+
+‘Did you say Poppet?’ inquired the stranger.
+
+‘No; Poppæa. You must have heard the name before, I should think. It is
+a Roman name. My father is a great classical scholar, and he chose it
+for me. And pray what is your name?’
+
+‘Nero.’
+
+The stranger pronounced the word without moving a muscle of his face,
+still intent upon his sketch; for it is vain for a man to say he has
+finished a thing of that kind; so long as his brushes are within reach,
+he will be putting in new touches. There was not a twinkle in those
+dubious eyes of his—not an upward move of those mobile lips. He was as
+grave as a judge.
+
+‘I don’t believe it!’ cried Daphne, bouncing up from her rock.
+
+‘Don’t believe what?’
+
+‘That your name is Nero.’
+
+‘Why not? Have I not as good a right to bear a Roman name as you have?
+Suppose I had a classical father as well as you. Why not?’
+
+‘It is too absurd.’
+
+‘Many things are absurd which yet are absolutely true.’
+
+‘And you are really called Nero?’
+
+‘As really as you are called Poppæa.’
+
+‘It is so dreadfully like a dog’s name.’
+
+‘It is a dog’s name. But you may call your dog Bill, or Joe, or Paul,
+or Peter. I don’t think that makes any difference. I would sooner have
+some dogs for my namesakes than some men.’
+
+‘Dibb, dear,’ said Daphne, turning sharply upon the victim of her
+folly, the long-suffering, patient Martha. ‘What’s the time?’
+
+She had a watch of her own, a neat little gold hunter; but it was
+rarely in going order for two consecutive days, and she was generally
+dependent on the methodical Dibb for all information as to the flight
+of time.
+
+‘A quarter to five.’
+
+‘Then we must be going home instantly. How could you let me stay so
+long, you foolish girl? I am sure it must be more than an hour’s walk
+to the town, and we promised poor dear Toby to be home by six.’
+
+‘It isn’t my fault,’ remarked Miss Dibb; ‘I should have been glad to go
+ever so long ago, if you had thought fit.’
+
+‘Hurry up, then, Dibb dear. Put away your crochet. Have you quite done
+with my block?’ to the unknown. ‘Thank you muchly. And now my box?
+Those go into the basket. Thanks, awfully,’ as he helped her to pack
+the tumblers, corkscrew, plates, and knives, which had served for their
+primitive repast. ‘And now we will wish you good-day—Mr.—Nero.’
+
+‘On no account. I am going to carry that basket back to Fontainebleau
+for you.’
+
+‘All along that dusty high road. We couldn’t think of such a thing;
+could we, Martha?’
+
+‘I don’t know that my opinion is of much account,’ said Martha stiffly.
+
+‘Don’t, you dear creature!’ cried Daphne, darting at her, and hugging
+her affectionately. ‘Don’t try to be ill-tempered, for you can’t
+do it. The thing is an ignominious failure. You were created to be
+good-natured, and nice, and devoted—especially to me.’
+
+‘You know how fond I am of you,’ murmured Martha reproachfully; ‘and
+you take a mean advantage of me when you go on so.’
+
+‘How am I going on? Is it very dreadful to let a gentleman carry a
+heavy basket for me?’
+
+‘A gentleman!’ muttered Martha, with a supercilious glance at the
+stranger’s well-worn velveteen.
+
+He was standing a little way off, out of hearing, taking a last long
+look at the valley.
+
+‘Yes; and every inch a gentleman, though his coat is shabby, and though
+he may be as poor as Job, and though he makes game of me!’ protested
+Daphne with conviction.
+
+‘Have your own way,’ replied Martha.
+
+‘I generally do,’ answered Daphne.
+
+And so they went slowly winding downhill in the westering sunshine, all
+among the gray rocks on which the purple shadows were deepening, the
+warm umber lights glowing, while the rosy evening light came creeping
+up in the distant west, and the voice of an occasional bird, so rare in
+this Gallic wood, took a vesper sound in the summer stillness.
+
+The holiday makers had all gone home. The French matron who had taken
+her rest so luxuriously, surrounded by her olivebranches, had put on
+her boots and departed. The women who sold cakes and fruit, and wooden
+paper-knives, had packed up their wares and gone away. All was silence
+and loneliness; and for a little while Daphne and her companions
+wandered on in quiet enjoyment of the scene and the atmosphere,
+treading the mossy, sandy path that wound in and out among the big
+rocks, sometimes nearly losing themselves, and anon following the blue
+arrow points which a careful hand had painted on the rocks to show them
+which way they should go.
+
+But Daphne was not given to silence. She found something to talk about
+before they had gone very far.
+
+‘You have travelled immensely, I suppose?’ she said to the stranger.
+
+‘I don’t know exactly what significance you attach to the word. Young
+ladies use such large words nowadays for such very small things. From
+a scientific explorer’s point of view, my wanderings have been very
+limited, but I daresay one of Cook’s tourists would consider me a
+respectable traveller. I have never seen the buried cities of Central
+America, nor surveyed the world from the top of Mount Everest, nor
+even climbed the Caucasus, nor wandered by stormy Hydaspes: but I have
+done Egypt, and Algeria, and Greece, and all that is tolerably worth
+seeing in Southern Europe, and have tried my hand, or rather my legs,
+at Alpine climbing, and have come to the conclusion that, although
+Nature is mountainous, life is everywhere more or less flat, stale, and
+unprofitable.’
+
+‘I’m sure I shouldn’t feel that if I were free to roam the world, and
+could paint as sweetly as you do.’
+
+‘I had a sweet subject, remember.’
+
+‘Please don’t,’ cried Daphne; ‘I rather like you when you are rude, but
+if you flatter I shall hate you.’
+
+‘Then I’ll be rude. To win your liking I would be more uncivil than
+Petruchio.’
+
+‘Katharine was a fool!’ exclaimed Daphne, skipping up the craggy side
+of one of the biggest rocks. ‘I have always despised her. To begin so
+well, and end so tamely.’
+
+‘If you don’t take care you’ll end by slipping off that rock, and
+spraining an ankle or two,’ said Nero warningly.
+
+‘Not I,’ answered Daphne confidently; ‘you don’t know how used I am to
+climbing. Oh, look at that too delicious lizard!’
+
+She was on her knees admiring the emerald-hued changeful creature.
+She touched it only with her breath, and it flashed away from her and
+vanished in some crevice of the rock.
+
+‘Silly thing, did it think I wanted to hurt it, when I was only
+worshipping its beauty?’ she cried.
+
+Then she rose suddenly, and stood on the rock, a slim girlish figure,
+with flattering drapery, poised as lightly as Mercury, gazing round
+her, admiring the tall slim stems of the beeches growing in groups
+like clustered columns, the long vista of rocks, the dark wall of
+fir-trees, mounting up and up to the edge of a saffron-tinted sky—for
+these loiterers had lost count of time since steady-going Martha looked
+at her reliable watch, and the last of the finches had sung his lullaby
+to his wife and family, and the golden ship called Sol had gone down to
+Night’s dark sea.
+
+‘Come down, you absurd creature!’ exclaimed Nero, with a peremptory
+voice, winding one arm about the light figure, and lifting the girl off
+the rock as easily as if she had been a feather-weight.
+
+‘You are very horrid!’ protested Daphne indignantly. ‘You are ever so
+much ruder than Petruchio. Why shouldn’t I stand on that rock? I was
+only admiring the landscape!’
+
+‘No doubt, and two minutes hence you would be calling upon us to admire
+a fine example of a sprained ankle.’
+
+‘I’m sure if your namesake was ever as unkind to my namesake, it’s no
+wonder she died young,’ said Daphne, pouting.
+
+‘I believe he was occasionally a little rough upon her,’ answered
+the artist with his imperturbable air. ‘But of course you have read
+your Tacitus and your Suetonius in the original. Young ladies know
+everything nowadays.’
+
+‘The Roman history we read is by a clergyman, written expressly for
+ladies’ schools,’ said Miss Dibb demurely.
+
+‘How intensely graphic and interesting that chronicle must be!’
+retorted the stranger.
+
+They had come to the end of the winding path among the rocks by this
+time, and were in a long, straight road, cut through the heart of
+the forest, between tall trees that seemed to have outgrown their
+strength—weedy-looking trees, planted too thickly, and only able to
+push their feeble growth up towards the sun, with no room for spreading
+boughs or interlacing roots. The evening light was growing grave and
+gray. Bats were skimming across the path, uncomfortably near Daphne’s
+flowing hair. Miss Dibb began to grumble.
+
+‘How dreadfully we have loitered!’ she cried, looking at her watch. ‘It
+is nearly eight, and we have so far to go. What will Miss Toby say?’
+
+‘Well, she will moan a little, no doubt,’ answered Daphne lightly,
+‘and will tell us that her heart has been in her mouth for the
+last hour, which need not distress us much, as we know it’s a
+physical impossibility; and that anyone might knock her down with a
+feather—another obvious impossibility, seeing that poor Toby weighs
+eleven stone—and then I shall kiss her and make much of her, and give
+her the packet of nougat I mean to buy on the way home, and all will be
+sunshine. She takes a sticky delight in nougat And now please talk and
+amuse us,’ said Daphne, turning to the artist with an authoritative
+air. ‘Tell us about some of your travels, or tell us where you live
+when you’re at home.’
+
+‘I think I’d rather talk of my travels. I’ve just come from Italy.’
+
+‘Where you have been painting prodigiously, of course. It is a land of
+pictures, is it not?’
+
+‘Yes; but Nature’s pictures are even better than the treasures of art.’
+
+‘If ever I should marry,’ said Daphne with a dreamy look, as if she
+were contemplating an event far off in the dimness of twenty years
+hence, ‘I should insist upon my husband taking me to Italy.’
+
+‘Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to afford the expense,’ suggested the
+practical Martha.
+
+‘Then I wouldn’t marry him,’ Daphne retorted decisively.
+
+‘Isn’t that rather a mercenary notion?’ asked the gentleman with the
+basket.
+
+‘Not at all. Do you suppose I should marry just for the sake of having
+a husband? If ever I do marry—which I think is more than doubtful—it
+will be, first and foremost, in order that I may do everything I wish
+to do, and have everything I want to have. Is there anything singular
+in that?’
+
+‘No; I suppose it is a young beauty’s innate idea of marriage. She sees
+herself in a glass, and recognises perfection, and knows her own value.’
+
+‘Are you married?’ asked Daphne abruptly, eager to change the
+conversation when the stranger became complimentary.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Engaged?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘What is she like?’ inquired Daphne eagerly. ‘Please tell us about her.
+It will be ever so much more interesting than Italy; for, after all,
+when one hasn’t seen a country description goes for so little. What is
+she like?’
+
+‘I could best answer that question in one word if I were to say she is
+perfection.’
+
+‘You called me perfection just now,’said Daphne pettishly.
+
+‘I was talking of your face. She is perfection in all things.
+Perfectly pure, and true, and good, and noble. She is handsome, highly
+accomplished, rich.’
+
+‘And yet you go wandering about the world in that coat,’ exclaimed
+Daphne, too impulsive to be polite.
+
+‘It is shabby, is it not? But if you knew how comfortable it is you
+wouldn’t wonder that I have an affection for it.’
+
+‘Go on about the young lady, please. Have you been long engaged to her?’
+
+‘Ever since I can remember, in my heart of hearts: she was my bright
+particular star when I was a boy at school: she was my sole incentive
+to work, or decent behaviour, when I was at the University. And now I
+am not going to say any more about her. I think I have told you enough
+to gratify any reasonable curiosity. Ask me conundrums, young ladies,
+if you please, or do something to amuse me. Remember, I am carrying the
+basket, and a man is something more than a beast of burden. My mind
+requires relaxation.’
+
+Martha Dibb grinned all over broad frank face. Riddles were her
+delight. She had little manuscript books filled with them in her
+scrawly, pointed writing. She began at once, like a musical-box that
+has been wound up, and did not leave off asking conundrums till they
+were half-way down the long street leading to the palace, near which
+Miss Toby and her pupils had their lodging.
+
+But Daphne had no intention that the stranger should learn exactly
+where she lived. Reckless as she was, mirthful and mischievous as Puck
+or Robin Goodfellow, she had still a dim idea that her conduct was not
+exactly correct, or would not be correct in England. On the Continent,
+of course, there must be a certain license. English travellers dined at
+public tables, and gamed in public rooms—were altogether more sociable
+and open to approach than on their native soil. It was only a chosen
+few—the peculiarly gifted in stiffness—who retained their glacial
+crust through every change of scene and climate, and who would perish
+rather than cross the street ungloved, or discourse familiarly with an
+unaccredited stranger. But, even with due allowance for Continental
+laxity, Daphne felt that she had gone a little too far. So she pulled
+up suddenly at the corner of a side street, and demanded her basket.
+
+‘What does that mean?’ asked the painter, with a look of lazy surprise.
+
+‘Only that this is our way home, and that we won’t trouble you to carry
+the basket any further, thanks intensely.’
+
+‘But I am going to carry it to your door.’
+
+‘It’s awfully good of you to propose it, but our governess would be
+angry with us for imposing on the kindness of a stranger, and I am
+afraid we should get into trouble.’
+
+‘Then I haven’t a word to say,’ answered the painter, smiling at her
+blushing eloquent face. Verily a speaking face—beautiful just as a
+sunlit meadow is beautiful, because of the lights and shadows that flit
+and play perpetually across it.
+
+‘Do you live in this street?’ he asked.
+
+‘No; our house is in the second turning to the right, seven doors from
+the corner,’ said Daphne, who had obtained possession of the basket.
+‘Good-bye.’
+
+She ran off with light swift foot, followed lumpishly and breathlessly
+by the scandalised Martha.
+
+‘Daphne, how could you tell him such an outrageous story?’ she
+exclaimed.
+
+‘Do you think I was going to tell him the truth?’ asked Daphne, still
+fluttering on, light as a lapwing. ‘We should have had him calling on
+Miss Toby to-morrow morning to ask if we were fatigued by our walk,
+or perhaps singing the serenade from Don Giovanni under our windows
+to-night. Now, Martha dearest, don’t say one word; I know I have
+behaved shamefully, but it has been awful fun, hasn’t it?’
+
+‘I’m sure I felt ready to sink through the ground all the time,’ panted
+Martha.
+
+‘Darling, the ground and you are both too solid for there to be any
+fear of that.’
+
+They had turned a corner by this time, and doubling and winding, always
+at a run, they came very speedily to the quiet spot near the palace,
+where their governess had lodged them in a low blind-looking white
+house, with only one window that commanded a view of the street.
+
+They had been so fleet of foot, and had so doubled on the unknown,
+that, from this upper window, they had presently the satisfaction
+of seeing him come sauntering along the empty street, careless,
+indifferent, with dreamy eyes looking forward into vacancy, a man
+without a care.
+
+‘He doesn’t look as if he minded our having given him the slip one
+little bit,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘Why should he?’ asked the matter-of-fact Martha. ‘I daresay he was
+tired of carrying the basket.’
+
+‘Go your ways,’ said Daphne with a faint sigh, waving her hand at the
+vanishing figure. ‘Go your ways over mountain and sea, through wood
+and valley. This world is a big place, and it isn’t likely you and I
+will ever meet again.’ Then, turning to her companion with a sudden
+change of manner, she exclaimed: ‘Martha, I believe we have both made a
+monstrous mistake.’
+
+‘As how?’ asked Miss Dibb stupidly.
+
+‘In taking him for a poor artist.’
+
+‘He looks like one.’
+
+‘Not he. There is nothing about him but his coat that looks poor, and
+he wears that as if it were purple and ermine. Did you notice his eye
+when he ordered us to change the conversation, an eye accustomed to
+look at inferiors? And there is a careless pride in his manner, like
+a man who believes that the world was made on purpose for him, yet
+doesn’t want to make any fuss about it. Then he is engaged to a rich
+lady, and he has been at a university. No, Martha, I am sure he is no
+wandering artist living on his pencil.’
+
+‘Then he must think all the worse of us,’ said Martha, solemnly.
+
+‘What does it matter?’ asked Daphne, with a careless shrug. ‘We have
+seen the last of each other.’
+
+‘We can never be sure of that. One might meet him at a party.’
+
+‘I don’t think you will,’ said Daphne, faintly supercilious, ‘and the
+chances are ever so many to one against even my meeting him anywhere.’
+
+Here Miss Toby burst into the room. She had been lying down in an
+adjacent chamber, resting her poor bilious head, when the girls came
+softly in, and had only just heard their voices.
+
+‘Oh, you dreadful girls, what hours of torture you have caused me!’ she
+exclaimed. ‘I thought something must have happened.’
+
+‘Something did happen,’ said Daphne; whereupon Martha thought she was
+going to confess everything.
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘A lizard.’
+
+‘Did it sting you?’
+
+‘No; it darted away when I looked at it. A lovely glittering green
+thing. I wish I could tame one and wear it for a necklace. And I nearly
+fell off a rock; and I tried hard to paint the valley, and made a most
+dismal failure. But the view from the hill is positively delicious,
+Toby dear, and the rocks are wonderful; huge masses of granite tumbled
+about among the trees anyhow, as if Titans had been pelting one
+another. It’s altogether lovely. You must go with us to-morrow, Toby
+love.’
+
+Miss Toby, diverted from her intention to scold, shook her head
+despondingly.
+
+‘I should like it of all things,’ she sighed. ‘But I am such a bad
+walker, and the heat always affects my head. Besides, I think we ought
+to go over the palace to-morrow. There is so much instruction to be
+derived from a place so full of historical associations.’
+
+‘No doubt,’ answered the flippant Daphne, ‘though if you were to tell
+me that it had been built by Julius Cæsar or Alfred the Great, I should
+hardly be wise enough to contradict you.’
+
+‘My dear Daphne, after you have been so carefully grounded in history,’
+remonstrated Miss Toby.
+
+‘I know, dear; but then you see I have never built anything on the
+ground. It’s all very well to dig out foundations, but if one never
+gets any further than that! But we’ll see the palace to-morrow, and you
+shall teach me no end of history while we are looking at pictures and
+things.’
+
+‘If my poor head be well enough,’ sighed Miss Toby, and then she began
+to move languidly to and fro, arranging for the refreshment of her
+pupils, who wanted their supper.
+
+When the supper was ready, Daphne could eat nothing although five
+minutes before she had declared herself ravenous. She was too excited
+to eat. She talked of the forest, the view, the heat, the sky,
+everything except the stranger, and his name was trembling on her lips
+perpetually. Every now and then she pulled herself up abruptly in the
+middle of a sentence, and flashed a vivid glance at stolid Martha,
+her dark gray eyes shining like stars, full of mischievous light. She
+would have liked to tell Miss Toby everything, but to do so might be
+to surrender all future liberty. Headache or no headache, the honest
+little governess would never have allowed her pupils to wander about
+alone again, could she have beheld them, in her mind’s eye, picnicking
+with a nameless stranger.
+
+There was a little bit of garden at the back of the low, white house,
+hardly more than a green courtyard, with a square grass plot and a
+few shrubs, into which enclosure the windows all looked, save that
+one peep-hole towards the street. Above the white wall that shut in
+the bit of green rose the foliage of a much larger garden—acacias
+shedding their delicate perfume on the cool night, limes just breaking
+into flower, dark-leaved magnolias, tulip-trees, birch and aspen—a
+lovely variety of verdure. And over all this shone the broad disk of a
+ripening moon, flooding the world with light.
+
+When supper was over, Daphne bounded out into the moonlit garden, and
+began to play at battledore and shuttlecock. She was all life and fire
+and movement, and could not have sat still for the world.
+
+‘Come,’ she cried to Martha; ‘bring your battledore. A match for a
+franc’s worth of nougat.’
+
+Miss Dibb had settled herself to her everlasting crochet by the light
+of two tall candles. Miss Toby was reading a Tauchnitz novel.
+
+‘I’m tired to death,’ grumbled Martha. ‘I’m sure we must have walked
+miles upon miles. How can you be so restless?’
+
+‘How can you mope indoors on such an exquisite night?’ exclaimed
+Daphne. ‘I feel as if I could send my shuttlecock up to the moon. Come
+out and be beaten! No; you are too wise. You know that I should win
+to-night.’
+
+The little toy of cork and feathers quivered high up in the bright air;
+the slender, swaying figure bent back like a reed as the girl looked
+upward; the fair golden head moved with every motion of the battledore
+as the player bent or rose to anticipate the flying cork.
+
+She was glad to be out there alone. She was thinking of the unknown
+all the time. She could not get him out of her mind. She had a vague
+unreasonable idea that he must be near her; that he saw her as she
+played; that he was hiding somewhere in the shadow yonder, peeping
+over the wall; that he was in the moon—in the night—everywhere; that
+it was his breath which flattered those leaves trembling above the
+wall; that it was his footfall which she heard rustling among the
+shrubs—a stealthy, mysterious sound mingling with the plish-plash of
+the fountain in the next garden. She had talked lightly enough a little
+while ago of having seen the last of him: yet now, alone with her
+thoughts in the moonlit garden, it seemed as if this nameless stranger
+were interwoven with the fabric of her life, a part of her destiny for
+evermore.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+‘AND VOLATILE, AS AY WAS HIS USAGE.’
+
+
+Another brilliant summer day, a cloudless blue sky, a world steeped in
+sunshine. On the broad gravelled space in front of the palace-railings
+the heat and glare would have been too much for a salamander, and even
+Daphne, who belonged to the salamander species in so much as she had
+an infinite capacity for enjoying sunshine, blinked a little as she
+crossed the shelterless promenade, under her big tussore parasol, a
+delightfully cool-looking figure, in a plain white muslin gown, and a
+muslin shepherdess hat.
+
+Poor Miss Toby’s chronic headache had been a little worse this
+morning. Heroically had she striven to fulfil her duty, albeit to lift
+her leaden head from the pillow was absolute agony. She sat at the
+breakfast-table, white, ghastly, uncomplaining, pouring out coffee, at
+the very odour of which her bilious soul sickened. Vainly did Daphne
+entreat her to go back to bed, and to leave her charges to take care of
+themselves, as they had done yesterday.
+
+‘We won’t go to the forest any more till you are able to go with us,’
+said Daphne, dimly conscious that her behaviour in that woodland region
+had been open to blame. ‘We can just go quietly to the palace, and
+stroll through the rooms with the few tourists who are likely to be
+there to-day. The Fontainebleau season has hardly begun, don’t you
+know, and we may have nobody but the guide, and of course he must be a
+respectable person.’
+
+‘My dear, I was sent here to take care of you both, and I must do my
+duty,’ answered Miss Toby with a sickly smile. ‘Yesterday my temples
+throbbed so that I could hardly move, but I am a little better to-day,
+and I shall put on my bonnet and come with you.’
+
+She rose, staggered a few paces towards the adjacent chamber, and
+reeled like a landsman at sea. Then she sank into the nearest chair,
+and breathed a weary sigh.
+
+‘It’s no use, Toby darling,’ cried Daphne, bending over her with
+tenderest sympathy. To be tender, sweet, and sympathetic in little
+outward ways, tones of voice, smiles, and looks, was one of Daphne’s
+dangerous gifts. ‘My dearest Toby, why struggle against the
+inevitable?’ she urged. ‘It is simply one of your regular bilious
+attacks. All you have to do is to lie quietly in a dark room and sleep
+it off, just as you have so often done before. To-morrow you will be as
+well as I am.’
+
+‘Then why not wait till to-morrow for seeing the palace,’ said Miss
+Toby faintly, ‘and amuse yourselves at home, for once in a way? You
+really ought to study a little, Daphne. Madame will be horrified if she
+finds you have done no work all this time.’
+
+‘But I do work of an evening—sometimes, dearest,’ expostulated Daphne;
+‘and I’m sure you would not like us to be half suffocated all day in
+this stifling little salon, poring over horrid books. We should be
+having the fever next, and then how would you account to Madame for
+your stewardship?’
+
+‘Don’t be irreverent, Daphne,’ said Miss Toby, who thought that any use
+of scriptural phrases out of church was a kind of blasphemy. ‘I think
+you would really be better indoors upon such a day as this; but I feel
+too languid to argue the point. What would you like best, Martha?’
+
+Miss Dibb, who employed every odd scrap of spare time in the
+development of her _magnum opus_ in crochet-work, looked up with a
+glance of indifference, and was about to declare her willingness to
+stay indoors for ever, so that the crochet counterpane might flourish
+and wax wide, when a stealthy frown from Daphne checked her.
+
+‘Daphne would rather see the palace to-day, I know,’ she replied
+meekly, ‘and I think,’ with a nervous glance at her schoolfellow, who
+was scowling savagely, ‘I think I would rather go too.’
+
+‘Well,’ sighed Miss Toby, ‘I have made an effort, but I feel that I
+could not endure the glare out of doors. You must go alone. Be sure you
+are both very quiet, if there are tourists about. Don’t giggle, or look
+round at people, or make fun of their gowns and bonnets, as you are too
+fond of doing. It is horribly unladylike. And if any stranger should
+try to get into conversation with you—of course only a low-bred person
+would do such a thing—pray remember that your own self-respect would
+counsel you to be dumb.’
+
+‘Can you suppose we would speak to anyone?’ exclaimed Daphne, as she
+tripped away to her little bedroom, next door to Miss Toby’s. It was
+the queerest little room, with a narrow, white-muslin-curtained bed
+in a recess, and a marvellous piece of furniture which was washstand,
+chest of drawers, and dressing-table all in one. A fly-spotted glass,
+inclining from the wall above this _multum in parvo_, was Daphne’s only
+mirror.
+
+Here she put on her muslin hat, with a bouquet of blue cornflowers
+perched coquettishly on the brim, making a patch of bright cool colour
+that refreshed the eye. Never had she looked prettier than this
+midsummer morning. Even the fly-spotted clouded old glass told her as
+much as that.
+
+‘If—if he were to be doing the _château_ to-day,’ she thought,
+tremulous with excitement, ‘how strange it would be. But that’s not
+likely. He is not of the common class of tourists, who all follow the
+same beaten track. I daresay he will idle away the afternoon in the
+woods, just as he did yesterday.’
+
+‘Martha, shall we go to the forest to-day, and leave the _château_ to
+be done to-morrow with Toby?’ Daphne asked, when she and her companion
+were crossing the wide parade-ground, where the soldiers trotted by
+with a great noise and clatter early in the morning, with a fanfare of
+trumpets and an occasional roll of a drum. ‘It might seem kinder to
+poor dear Toby, don’t you know.’
+
+‘I think it would be very wrong, Daphne,’ answered the serious Martha.
+‘We told Miss Toby we were going to the palace, and we are bound to go
+straight there and nowhere else. Besides, I want to see the pictures
+and statues and things, and I am sick to death of that forest.’
+
+‘After one day! Oh, Martha, what an unromantic soul you must have. I
+could live and die there, if I had pleasant company. I have always
+envied Rosalind and Celia.’
+
+‘They must have been very glad when they got home,’ said Martha.
+
+Out of the blinding whiteness of the open street they went in at a gate
+to a gravelled quadrangle, where the sun seemed to burn with yet more
+fiery heat. Even Daphne felt breathless, but it was a pleasant feeling,
+the delight of absolute summer, which comes so seldom in the changeful
+year. Then they went under an archway, and into the inner quadrangle,
+with the white palace on all sides of them. It wanted some minutes of
+eleven, and they were shown into a cool official-looking room, where
+they were to wait till the striking of the hour. The room was panelled,
+painted white, a room of Louis the Fourteenth’s time most likely; what
+little furniture there was being quaint and rococo, but not old. The
+blinds were down, the shutters half-closed, and the room was in deep
+shadow.
+
+‘How nice!’ gasped Martha, who had been panting like a fish out of
+water all the way.
+
+‘It is like coming into a grotto,’ said Daphne, sinking into a chair.
+
+‘It is not half so nice as the forest,’ said a voice in the
+semi-darkness.
+
+Daphne gave a visible start. She had mused upon the possibility of
+meeting her acquaintance of yesterday, and had decided that the thing
+was unlikely. Yet her spirits had been buoyed by a lurking idea that he
+might crop up somehow before the day was done. But to find him here at
+the very beginning of things was startling.
+
+‘Did you know that we were coming here to-day?’ she faltered.
+
+‘Hadn’t the slightest idea; but I wanted to see the place myself,’ he
+answered coolly.
+
+Daphne blushed rosy-red, deeply ashamed of her foolish, impulsive
+speech. The stranger had been sitting in that cool shade for the last
+ten minutes, and his eyes had grown accustomed to the obscurity. He saw
+the blush, he saw the bright expressive face under the muslin hat, the
+slim figure in the white frock, every line sharply accentuated against
+a gray background, the slender hand in a long Swedish glove. She looked
+more womanly in her white gown and hat—and yet more childlike—than she
+had looked yesterday in blue and scarlet.
+
+They sat for about five minutes in profound silence. Daphne, usually
+loquacious, felt as if she could not have spoken for the world. Martha
+was by nature stolid and inclined to dumbness. The stranger was
+watching Daphne’s face in a lazy reverie, thinking that his hurried
+sketch of yesterday was not half so lovely as the original, and yet it
+had seemed to him almost the prettiest head he had ever painted.
+
+‘The provoking minx has hardly one good feature,’ he thought. ‘It is
+an utterly unpaintable beauty—a beauty of colour, life, and movement.
+Photograph her asleep, and she would be as plain as a pike-staff. How
+different from——’
+
+He gave a faint sigh, and was startled from his musing by the door
+opening with a bang and an official calling out, ‘This way, ladies and
+gentlemen.’
+
+They crossed the blazing courtyard in the wake of a brisk little
+gentleman in uniform, who led them up a flight of stone steps, and
+into a stony hall. Thence to the chapel, and then to an upper story,
+and over polished floors through long suites of rooms, everyone made
+more or less sacred by historical memories. Here was the table on which
+Napoleon the Great signed his abdication, while his Old Guard waited
+in the quadrangle below. Daphne looked first at the table and then out
+of the window, almost as if she expected to see that faithful soldiery
+drawn up in the stony courtyard—grim bearded men who had fought and
+conquered on so many a field, victors of Lodi and Arcola, Austerlitz
+and Jena, Friedland and Wagram, and who knew now that all was over and
+their leader’s star had gone down.
+
+Then to rooms hallowed by noble Marie Antoinette, lovely alike in
+felicity and in ruin. Smaller, prettier, more home-like rooms came
+next, where the Citizen King and his gentle wife tasted the sweetness
+of calm domestic joys; a tranquil gracious family circle; to be
+transferred, with but a brief interval of stormy weather, to the
+quiet reaches of the Thames, in Horace Walpole’s beloved ‘County of
+Twits.’ Then back to the age of tournaments and tented fields; and, lo!
+they were in the rooms which courtly Francis built and adorned, and
+glorified by his august presence. Here, amidst glitter of gold and glow
+of colour, the great King—Charles the Fifth’s rival and victor—lived
+and loved, and shed sunshine upon an adoring court. Here from many a
+canvas, fresh as if painted yesterday, looked the faces of the past.
+Names fraught with romantic memories sanctify every nook and corner
+of the palace. Everywhere appears the cypher of Diana of Poitiers
+linked with that of her royal lover, Henry the Second. Catherine de
+Médicis must have looked upon those interlaced initials many a time in
+the period of her probation, looked, and held her peace, and schooled
+herself to patience, waiting till Fortune’s wheel should turn and bring
+her day of power. Here in this long, lofty chamber, sunlit, beautiful,
+the fated Monaldeschi’s life-blood stained the polished floor.
+
+‘To say the least of it, the act was an impertinence on Queen
+Christina’s part, seeing that she was only a visitor at Fontainebleau,’
+said the stranger languidly. ‘Don’t you think so, Poppæa?’
+
+Daphne required to have the whole story told her; that particular event
+not having impressed itself on her mind.
+
+‘I have read all through Bonnechose’s history of France, and half way
+from the beginning again,’ she explained. ‘But when one sits droning
+history in a row of droning girls, even a murder doesn’t make much
+impression upon one. It’s all put in the same dull, dry way. This year
+there was a great scarcity of corn. The poor in the provinces suffered
+extreme privations. Queen Christina, of Sweden, while on a visit at
+Fontainebleau, ordered the execution of her counsellor Monaldeschi.
+There was also a plague at Marseilles. The Dauphin died suddenly in the
+fifteenth year of his age. The king held a Bed of Justice for the first
+time since he ascended the throne. That is the kind of thing, you know.’
+
+‘I can conceive that so bald a calendar would scarcely take a firm grip
+upon one’s memory,’ assented the stranger. ‘Details are apt to impress
+the mind more than events.’
+
+After this came the rooms which the Pope occupied during his
+captivity—rooms that had double and treble memories; here a
+nuptial-chamber, there a room all a-glitter with gilding—a room
+that had sheltered Charles the Fifth, and afterwards fair, and not
+altogether fortunate, Anne of Austria. Daphne felt as if her brain
+would hardly hold so much history. She felt a kind of relief when they
+came to a theatre, where plays had been acted before Napoleon the Third
+and his lovely empress in days that seemed to belong to her own life.
+
+‘I think I was born then,’ she said naïvely.
+
+There had been no other visitors—no tourists of high or low degree. The
+two girls and the unknown had had the palace to themselves, and the
+guide, mollified by a five-franc piece slipped into his hand by the
+gentleman, had allowed them to make their circuit at a somewhat more
+leisurely pace than that brisk trot on which he usually insisted.
+
+Yet for all this it was still early when they came down the double
+flight of steps and found themselves once again in the quadrangle, the
+Court of Farewells, so called from the day when the great emperor bade
+adieu to pomp and power, and passed like a splendid apparition from the
+scene he had glorified. The sun had lost none of his fervour—nay, had
+ascended to his topmost heaven, and was pouring down his rays upon the
+baking earth.
+
+‘Let us go to the gardens and feed the carp,’ said Nero, and it was
+an infinite relief, were it only for the refreshment of the eye, to
+find themselves under green leaves and by the margin of a lovely lake,
+statues of white marble gleaming yonder at the end of verdant arcades,
+fountains plashing. Here under the trees a delicious coolness and
+stillness contrasted with the glare of light on the open space yonder,
+where an old woman sat at a stall, set out with cakes and sweetmeats,
+ready to supply food for the carp-feeders.
+
+‘Yes: let us feed the carp,’ cried Daphne, running out into this
+sunlit space, her white gown looking like some saintly raiment in the
+supernatural light of a transfiguration. ‘That will be lovely! I have
+heard of them. They are intensely old, are they not—older than the
+palace itself?’
+
+‘They are said to have been here when Henry and Diana walked in yonder
+alleys,’ replied Nero. ‘I believe they were here when the Roman legions
+conquered Gaul. One thing seems as likely as the other, doesn’t it,
+Poppæa?’
+
+‘I don’t know about that: but I like to think they are intensely old,’
+answered Daphne, leaning on the iron railing, and looking down at the
+fish, which were already competing for her favours, feeling assured she
+meant to feed them.
+
+The old woman got up from her stool, and came over to ask if the young
+lady would like some bread for the carp.
+
+‘Yes, please—a lot,’ cried Daphne, and she began to fumble in her
+pocket for the little purse with its three or four francs and
+half-francs.
+
+The stranger tossed a franc to the woman before Daphne’s hand could
+get to the bottom of her pocket, and the bread was forthcoming—a
+large hunch off a long loaf. Daphne began eagerly to feed the fish.
+They were capital fun, disputing vehemently for her bounty, huge
+gray creatures which looked centuries old—savage, artful, vicious
+exceedingly. She gave them each a name. One she called Francis, another
+Henry, another Diana, another Catherine. She was as pleased and amused
+as a child, now throwing her bit of bread as far as her arm could fling
+it, and laughing merrily at the eager rush of competitors, now luring
+them close to the rails, and smiling down at the gray snouts yawning
+for their prey.
+
+‘Do you think they would eat me if I were to tumble in among them?’
+asked Daphne. ‘Greedy creatures! They seem ravenous enough for
+anything. There! they have devoured all my bread.’
+
+‘Shall I buy you some more?’
+
+‘Please, no. This kind of thing might go on for ever. They are
+insatiable. You would be ruined.’
+
+‘Shall we go under the trees?’
+
+‘If you like. But don’t you think this sunshine delicious? It is so
+nice to bask. I think I am rather like a cat in my enjoyment of the
+sun.’
+
+‘Your friend seems to have had enough of it,’ said Nero, glancing
+towards a sheltered bench to which Miss Dibb had discreetly withdrawn
+herself.
+
+‘Martha! I had almost forgotten her existence. The carp are so
+absorbing.’
+
+‘Let us stay in the sunshine. We can rejoin your friend presently. She
+has taken out her needlework, and seems to be enjoying herself.’
+
+‘Another strip of her everlasting counterpane,’ said Daphne. ‘That
+girl’s persevering industry is maddening. It makes one feel so
+abominably idle. Would you be very shocked to know that I detest
+needlework?’
+
+‘I should as soon expect a butterfly to be fond of needlework as you,’
+answered Nero. ‘Let me see your hand.’
+
+She had taken off her glove to feed the carp, and her hand lay upon
+the iron rail, dazzlingly white in the sunshine; Nero took it up in
+his, so gently, so reverently, that she could not resent the action. He
+took it as a priest or physician might have taken it: altogether with a
+professional or scientific air.
+
+‘Do you know that I am a student of chiromancy?’ he asked.
+
+‘How should I, when I don’t know anything about you? And I don’t even
+know what chiromancy is.’
+
+‘The science of reading fate and character from the configuration of
+the hand.’
+
+‘Why, that is what gipsies pretend to do,’ cried Daphne. ‘You surely
+cannot believe in such nonsense.’
+
+‘I don’t know that my belief goes very far; but I have found the study
+full of interest, and more than once I have stumbled upon curious
+truths.’
+
+‘So do the most ignorant gipsy fortune-tellers,’ retorted Daphne.
+‘People who are always guessing must sometimes guess right. But you may
+tell my fortune all the same, please; it will be more amusing than the
+carp.’
+
+‘If you approach the subject in such an irreverent spirit, I don’t
+think I will have anything to say to you. Remember, I have gone into
+this question thoroughly, from a scientific point of view.’
+
+‘I am sure you are wonderfully clever,’ said Daphne; and then, in a
+coaxing voice, with a lovely look from the sparkling gray eyes, she
+pleaded: ‘Pray tell my fortune. I shall be wretched if you refuse.’
+
+‘And I should be wretched if I were to disoblige you. Your left hand,
+please, and be serious, for it is a very solemn ordeal.’
+
+She gave him her left hand. He turned the soft rosy childish palm to
+the sunlight, and pored over it as intently as if it had been some
+manuscript treatise of Albertus Magnus, written in cypher, to be
+understood only by the hierophant in science.
+
+‘You are of a fitful temper,’ he said, ‘and do not make many friends.
+Yet you are capable of loving intensely—one or two persons perhaps,
+not more; indeed, I think only one at a time, for your nature is
+concentrative rather than diffuse.’
+
+He spoke slowly and deliberately—coldly indifferent as an antique
+oracle—with his eyes upon her hand all the time. He took no note of the
+changes in her expressive face, which would have told him that he had
+hit the truth.
+
+‘You are apt to be dissatisfied with life.’
+
+‘Oh, indeed I am,’ she cried, with a weary sigh; ‘there are times when
+I do so hate my life and all things belonging to me—except just one
+person—that I would change places with any peasant-girl trudging home
+from market.’
+
+‘You are romantic, variable. You do not care for beaten paths, and have
+a hankering for the wild and strange. You love the sea better than the
+land, the night better than the day.’
+
+‘You are a wizard,’ cried Daphne, remembering her wild delight in the
+dancing waves as she stood on the deck of the Channel steamer, her
+intense love of the winding river at home—the deep, rapid stream—and of
+fresh salt breezes, and a free ocean life; remembering, too, how her
+soul had thrilled with rapture in the shadowy courtyard last night,
+when her shuttlecock flew up towards the moon. ‘You have a wonderful
+knack of finding out things,’ she said. ‘Go on, please.’
+
+He had dropped her hand suddenly, and was looking up at her with
+intense earnestness.
+
+‘Please go on,’ she repeated impatiently.
+
+‘I have done. There is no more to be told.’
+
+‘Nonsense. I know you are keeping back something; I can see it in your
+face. There is something unpleasant—or something strange—I could see it
+in the way you looked at me just now. I insist upon knowing everything.’
+
+‘Insist! I am only a fortune-teller so far as it pleases me. Do you
+think if a man’s hand told me that he was destined to be hanged, I
+should make him uneasy by saying so?’
+
+‘But my case is not so bad as that?’
+
+‘No; not quite so bad as that,’ he answered lightly, trying to smile.
+
+The whole thing seemed more or less a joke; but there are some natures
+so sensitive that they tremble at the lightest touch; and Daphne felt
+uncomfortable.
+
+‘Do tell me what it was,’ she urged earnestly.
+
+‘My dear child, I have no more to tell you. The hand shows character
+rather than fate. Your character is as yet but half developed. If you
+want a warning, I would say to you: Beware of the strength of your own
+nature. In that lies your greatest danger. Life is easiest to those
+who can take it lightly—who can bend their backs to any burden, and be
+grateful for every ray of sunshine.’
+
+‘Yes,’ she answered contemptuously; ‘for the drudges. But please tell
+me the rest. I know you read something in these queer little lines and
+wrinkles,’ scrutinising her pink palm as she spoke, ‘something strange
+and startling—for you were startled. You can’t deny that.’
+
+‘I am not going to admit or deny anything,’ said Nero, with a quiet
+firmness that conquered her, resolute as she was when her own pleasure
+or inclination was in question. ‘The oracle has spoken. Make the most
+you can of his wisdom.’
+
+‘You have told me nothing,’ she said, pouting, but submissive.
+
+‘And now let us go out of this bakery, under the trees yonder, where
+your friend looks so happy with her crochet-work.’
+
+‘I think we ought to go home,’ hesitated Daphne, not in the least as if
+she meant it.
+
+‘Home! nonsense. It isn’t one o’clock yet; and you don’t dine at one,
+do you?’
+
+‘We dine at six,’ replied Daphne with dignity, ‘but we sometimes lunch
+at half-past one.’
+
+‘Your luncheon isn’t a very formidable affair, is it—hardly worth going
+home for?’
+
+‘It will keep,’ said Daphne. ‘If there is anything more to be seen,
+Martha and I may as well stop and see it.’
+
+‘There are the gardens, beyond measure lovely on such a day as this;
+and there is the famous vinery; and, I think, if we could find a very
+retired spot out of the ken of yonder beardless patrol, I might smuggle
+in the materials for another picnic.’
+
+‘That would be too delightful,’ cried Daphne, clapping her hands in
+childish glee, forgetful of fate and clairvoyance.
+
+They strolled slowly through the blinding heat towards that cool grove
+where patient Martha sat weaving her web, as inflexible in her stolid
+industry as if she had been one of the fatal sisters.
+
+‘What have you been doing all this time, Daphne?’ she asked, lifting up
+her eyes as they approached.
+
+‘Feeding the carp. You have no idea what fun they are.’
+
+‘I wonder you are not afraid of a sunstroke.’
+
+‘I am never afraid of anything, and I love the sun. Come, Martha, roll
+up that everlasting crochet, and come for a ramble. We are going to
+explore the gardens, and by-and-by Mr. Nero is going to get us some
+lunch.’
+
+Martha looked at the unknown doubtfully, yet not without favour. She
+was a good, conscientious girl: but she was fond of her meals, and
+a luncheon in the cool shade of these lovely groves would be very
+agreeable. She fancied, too, that the stranger would be a good caterer.
+He was much more carefully dressed to-day, in a gray travelling suit.
+Everything about him looked fresh and bright, and suggestive of easy
+circumstances. She began to think that Daphne was right, and that he
+was no Bohemian artist, living from hand to mouth, but a gentleman
+of position, and that it would not be so very awkward to meet him in
+Regent street, when she should be shopping with mamma and Jane.
+
+They strolled along the leafy aisle on the margin of the blue bright
+lake, faintly stirred by lightest zephyrs. They admired the marble
+figures of nymph and dryad, which Martha thought would have looked
+better if they had been more elaborately clad. They wasted half an
+hour in happy idleness, enjoying the air, the cool umbrage of lime
+and chestnut, the glory of the distant light yonder on green sward or
+blue placid lake, enjoying Nature as she should be enjoyed, in perfect
+carelessness of mind and heart—as Horace enjoyed his Sabine wood,
+singing his idle praise of Lalage as he wandered, empty of care.
+
+They found at last an utterly secluded spot, where no eye of military
+or civil authority could reach them.
+
+‘Now, if you two young ladies will only be patient, and amuse
+yourselves here for a quarter of an hour or so, I will see what can be
+done in the smuggling line,’ said the unknown.
+
+‘I could stay here for a week,’ said Daphne, establishing herself
+comfortably on the velvet turf, while Martha pulled out her work-bag
+and resumed her crochet-hook. ‘Take your time, Mr. Nero. I am going to
+sleep.’
+
+She threw off her muslin hat, and laid her cheek upon the soft mossy
+bank, letting her pale golden hair fall like a veil over her neck and
+shoulders. They were in the heart of a green _bosquet_, far from the
+palace, far from the beaten track of tourists. Nero stopped at a curve
+in the path to look back at the recumbent figure, the sunny falling
+hair, the exquisite tint of cheek and chin and lips, just touched by
+the sun-ray glinting through a break in the foliage. He stood for a few
+momenta admiring this living picture, and then walked slowly down the
+avenue.
+
+‘A curious idle way of wasting a day,’ he mused; ‘but when a man has
+nothing particular to do with his days he may as well waste them
+one way as another. How lovely the child is in her imperfection! a
+faulty beauty—a faulty nature—but full of fascination. I must write a
+description of her in my next letter to my dear one. How interested she
+would feel in this childish, undisciplined character.’
+
+But somehow when his next letter to the lady of his love came to be
+written he was in a lazy mood, and did not mention Daphne. The subject,
+to be interesting, required to be treated in detail, and he did not
+feel himself equal to the task.
+
+‘Isn’t he nice?’ asked Daphne, when the unknown had departed.
+
+‘He is very gentlemanlike,’ assented Martha, ‘but still I feel we are
+doing wrong in encouraging him.’
+
+‘Encouraging him!’ echoed her schoolfellow. ‘You talk as if he were a
+stray cur that had followed us.’
+
+‘You perfectly well know what I mean, Daphne. It cannot be right to get
+acquainted with a strange gentleman as we have done. I wouldn’t have
+mamma or Jane know of it for the world.’
+
+‘Then don’t tell them,’ said Daphne, yawning listlessly, and opening
+her rosy palm for a nondescript green insect to crawl over it.
+
+‘But it seems such a want of candour,’ objected Martha.
+
+‘Then tell them, and defy them. But whatever you do, don’t be fussy,
+you dear good-natured old Martha; for of all things fussiness is the
+most detestable in hot weather. As for Mr. Nero, he will be off and
+away across the Jura before to-morrow night, I daresay, and he will
+forget us, and we shall forget him, and the thing will be all over and
+done with. I wish he would bring us our luncheon. I’m hungry.’
+
+‘I feel rather faint,’ admitted Martha, who thought it ungenteel to
+confess absolute hunger. ‘That bread we get for breakfast is all
+sponginess. Shall you tell your sister about Mr. Nero?’
+
+‘That depends. I may, perhaps, if I should be hard up for something to
+say to her.’
+
+‘Don’t you think she would be angry?’
+
+‘She never is angry. She is all sweetness and goodness, and belief
+in other people. I have spent very little of my life with her, or I
+should be ever so much better than I am. I should have grown up like
+her perhaps—or just a little like her, for I’m afraid the clay is
+different—if my father would have let me be brought up at home.’
+
+‘And he wouldn’t?’ asked Martha.
+
+She had heard her friend’s history very often, or as much of it as
+Daphne cared to tell, but she was always interested in the subject,
+and encouraged her schoolfellow’s egotism. Daphne’s people belonged
+to a world which Miss Dibb could never hope to enter; though perhaps
+Daphne’s father, Sir Vernon Lawford, had no larger income than Mr.
+Dibb, whose furniture and general surroundings were the best and most
+gorgeous that money could buy.
+
+‘No. When I was a little thing I was sent to a lady at Brighton,
+who kept a select school for little things; because my father could
+not bear a small child about the house. When I grew too tall for my
+frocks, and was all stocking and long hair, I was transferred to a
+very superior establishment at Cheltenham, because my father could not
+be worried by the spectacle of an awkward growing girl. When I grew
+still taller, and was almost a young woman, I was packed off to Madame
+Tolmache to be finished; and I am to be finished early next year, I
+believe, and then I am to go home, and my father will have to endure
+me.’
+
+‘How nice for you to go home for good! And your home is very beautiful,
+is it not?’ asked Martha, who had heard it described a hundred times.
+
+‘It is a lovely house in Warwickshire, all amongst meadows and winding
+streams—a long, low, white house, don’t you know, with no end of
+verandahs and balconies. I have been there very little, as you may
+imagine, but I love the dear old place all the same.’
+
+‘I don’t think I should like to live so far in the country,’ said
+Martha: ‘Clapham is so much nicer.’
+
+‘_Connais pas_,’ said Daphne indifferently.
+
+The unknown came sauntering back along the leafy arcade, but not
+alone; an individual quite as fashionably clad, and of appearance as
+gentlemanlike, walked a pace or two behind him.
+
+‘Well, young ladies, I have succeeded splendidly as a smuggler; but
+I thought two could bring more than one, so I engaged an ally. Now,
+Dickson, produce the Cliquot.’
+
+The individual addressed as Dickson took a gold-topped pint bottle out
+of each side-pocket. He then, from some crafty lurking-place, drew
+forth a crockery encased pie, some knives and forks, and a couple
+of napkins, while Nero emptied his own pockets, and spread their
+contents on the turf. He had brought some wonderful cherries—riper and
+sweeter-looking than French fruit usually is—several small white paper
+packages which suggested confectionery, a tumbler, and half-a-dozen
+rolls, which he had artfully disposed in his various pockets.
+
+‘We must have looked rather bulky,’ he said; ‘but I suppose the
+custodians of the place were too sleepy to take any notice of us. The
+nippers, Dickson? Yes! Thoughtful man! You can come back in an hour for
+the bottles and the pie-dish.’
+
+Dickson bowed respectfully and retired.
+
+‘Is that your valet?’ asked Daphne.
+
+‘He has the misfortune to fill that thankless office.’
+
+Daphne burst out laughing.
+
+‘And you travel with your own servant?’ she exclaimed. ‘It is too
+absurd! Do you know that yesterday I took you for a poor strolling
+artist, and I felt that it would be an act of charity to give you
+half-a-guinea for that sketch?’
+
+‘You would not have obtained it from me for a thousand half-guineas.
+No; I do not belong to the hard-up section of humanity. Perhaps many
+a penniless scamp is a better and happier man than I; but, although
+poverty is the school for heroes, I have never regretted that it was
+not my lot to be a pupil in that particular academy. And now, young
+ladies, fall to, if you please. Here is a Perigord pie, which I am
+assured is the best that Strasbourg can produce, and here are a few
+pretty tiny kickshaws in the way of pastry; and here, to wash these
+trifles down, is a bottle of the Widow Cliquot’s champagne.’
+
+‘I don’t know that I ever tasted champagne in my life.’
+
+‘How odd!’ cried Martha. ‘What, not at juvenile parties?’
+
+‘I have never been at any juvenile parties.’
+
+‘We have it often at home,’ said Martha, with a swelling consciousness
+of belonging to wealthy people. ‘At picnics, and whenever there is
+company to luncheon. The grown-ups have it every evening at dinner, if
+they like. Papa takes a particular pride in his champagne.’
+
+They grouped themselves upon the grass, hidden from all the outside
+world by rich summer foliage, much more alone than they had been
+yesterday in the heart of the forest. Honest Martha Dibb, who had
+been sorely affronted at the free-and-easiness of yesterday’s simple
+meal, offered no objection to the luxurious feast of to-day. A man
+who travelled with his valet could not be altogether an objectionable
+person. The whole thing was unconventional—slightly incorrect, even—but
+there was no longer any fear that they were making friends with a
+vagabond, who might turn up in after life and ask for small loans.
+
+‘He is evidently a gentleman,’ thought Martha, quite overcome by the
+gentility of the valet. ‘I daresay papa and mamma would be glad to know
+him.’
+
+Her spirits enlivened by the champagne, Miss Dibb became talkative.
+
+‘Do you know Clapham Common?’ she asked the stranger.
+
+‘I have heard of such a place. I believe I have driven past it
+occasionally on my way to Epsom,’ he answered listlessly, with his
+eyes on Daphne, who was seated in a lazy attitude, her back supported
+by the trunk of a lime-tree, her head resting against the brown bark,
+which made a sombre background for her yellow hair, her arms hanging
+loose at her sides in perfect restfulness, her face and attitude alike
+expressing a dreamy softness, as of one for whom the present hour is
+enough, and all time and life beyond it no more than a vague dream. She
+had just touched the brim of the champagne glass with her lips and that
+was all. She had pronounced the Perigord pie the nastiest thing that
+she had ever tasted; and she had lunched luxuriously upon pastry and
+cherries.
+
+‘I live on Clapham Common, when I am at home,’ said Martha. ‘Papa has
+bought a large house, with a Corinthian portico, and we have ever so
+many hot-houses. Papa takes particular pride in his grapes and pines.
+Are you fond of pines?’
+
+‘Not particularly,’ answered Nero, stifling a yawn. ‘And where do you
+live when you are at home, my pretty Poppæa?’ he asked, smiling at
+Daphne, who had lifted one languid arm to convey a ripe red cherry to
+lips that were as fresh and rosy as the fruit.
+
+‘In Oxford Street,’ answered Daphne coolly.
+
+Miss Dibb’s eyebrows went up in horrified wonder; she gave a little
+gasp, as who should say, ‘This is too much!’ but did not venture a
+contradiction.
+
+‘In Oxford Street? Why, that is quite a business thoroughfare. Is your
+father in trade?’
+
+‘Yes. He keeps an Italian warehouse.’
+
+Martha became red as a turkey-cock. This was a liberty which she felt
+she ought to resent at once; but, sooth to say, the matter-of-fact
+Martha had a wholesome awe of her friend. Daphne was very sweet; Daphne
+and she were sworn allies: but Daphne had a sharp tongue, and could let
+fly little shafts of speech, half playful, half satiric, that pierced
+her friend to the quick.
+
+‘I hope there is nothing that I need be ashamed of in my father’s
+trade,’ she said gravely.
+
+‘Of course not,’ faltered the stranger. ‘Trade is a most honourable
+employment of capital and intelligence. I have the greatest respect for
+the trading classes—but——’
+
+‘But you seemed surprised when I told you my father’s position.’
+
+‘Yes; I confess that I was surprised. You don’t look like a tradesman’s
+daughter, somehow. If you had told me that your father was a painter,
+or a poet, or an actor even, I should have thought it the most natural
+thing in the world. You look as if you were allied to the arts.’
+
+‘Is that a polite way of saying that I don’t look quite respectable?’
+
+‘I am not going to tell you what I mean. You would say I was paying you
+compliments, and I believe you have tabooed all compliments. I may be
+ruder than Petruchio—didn’t you tell me so in the forest yesterday?—but
+any attempt at playing Sir Charles Grandison will be resented.’
+
+‘I certainly like you best when you are rude,’ answered Daphne.
+
+She was not as animated as she had been yesterday during their homeward
+walk. The heat and the supreme stillness of the spot invited silence
+and repose. She was, perhaps, a little tired by the exploration of
+the _château_. She sat under the drooping branches of the lime, whose
+blossoms sweetened all the air, half in light, half in shadow: while
+Martha, who had eaten a hearty luncheon, and consumed nearly a pint
+of Cliquot, plodded on with her crochet-work, and tried to keep the
+unknown in conversation.
+
+She asked him if he had seen this, and that, and the other—operas,
+theatres, horticultural fêtes—labouring hard to make him understand
+that her people were in the very best society—as if opera-boxes and
+horticultural fêtes meant society! and succeeded only in boring him
+outrageously.
+
+He would have been content to sit in dreamy silence watching Daphne
+eat her cherries. Such an occupation seemed best suited to the sultry
+summer silence, the perfumed atmosphere.
+
+But Martha thought silence must mean dulness.
+
+‘We are dreadfully quiet to-day,’ she said. ‘We must do something to
+get the steam up. Shall we have some riddles? I know lots of good ones
+that I didn’t ask you yesterday.’
+
+‘Please don’t,’ cried Nero; ‘I am not equal to it. I think a single
+conundrum would crush me. Let us sit and dream.
+
+    “How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,
+     With half-shut eyes ever to seem
+     Falling asleep in a half-dream!
+     To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,
+     Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height.”’
+
+Martha looked round inquiringly. She did not see either myrrh-bush or
+height in the landscape. They were in a level bit of the park, shut in
+by trees.
+
+‘Is that poetry?’ she asked.
+
+‘Well, it’s the nearest approach to it that the last half-century has
+produced,’ replied the unknown, and then he went on quoting:
+
+    ‘“But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
+      How sweet (while warm airs lull us blowing lowly),
+      With half-dropt eyelids still,
+      Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
+      To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
+      His waters from the purple hill.”
+
+Poppæa, I wish you and I were queen and king of a Lotos Island, and
+could idle away our lives in perpetual summer.’
+
+‘We should soon grow tired of it,’ answered Daphne. ‘I am like the
+little boy in the French story-book. I delight in all the seasons. And
+I daresay you skate, hunt, and do all manner of things that couldn’t be
+done in summer.’
+
+‘True, my astute empress. But when one is setting under lime-boughs on
+such a day as this, eternal summer seems your only idea of happiness.’
+
+He gave himself up to idle musing. Yes; he was surprised, disappointed
+even, at the notion of this bright-haired nymph’s parentage. There was
+no discredit in being a tradesman’s daughter. He was very far from
+feeling a contempt for commerce. There were reasons in his own history
+why he should have considerable respect for successful trade. But for
+this girl he had imagined a different pedigree. She had a high-bred
+air—even in her reckless unconventionally—which accorded ill with
+his idea of a prosperous tradesman’s daughter. There was a poetry in
+her every look and movement, a wild untutored grace, which was the
+strangest of all flowers to have blossomed in a parlour behind a London
+shop. Reared in the smoke and grime of Oxford Street! Brought up amidst
+ever present considerations of pounds, shillings, and pence! The girl
+and her surroundings were so incongruous that the mere idea of them
+worried him.
+
+‘And by-and-by she will marry some bloated butcher or pompous
+coach-builder, and spend all her days among the newly rich,’ he
+thought. ‘She will grow into the fat wife of a fat alderman, and
+overdress and overeat herself, and live a life of prosperous vulgarity.’
+
+The notion was painful to him, and he was obliged to remind himself
+that there was very little likelihood of his ever seeing this girl
+again, so that the natural commonplaceness of her fate could make very
+little difference to him.
+
+‘Better to be vulgarly prosperous and live to be a great-grandmother
+than to fulfil the prophecy written on her hand,’ he said to himself.
+‘What does it matter? Let us enjoy to-day, and let the long line of
+to-morrows rest in the shadow that wraps the unknown future. To-morrow
+I shall be on my way to Geneva, panting and stifling in a padded
+railway-carriage, with oily Frenchmen, who will insist upon having the
+windows up through the heat and dust of the long summer day, and I
+shall look back with envy to this delicious afternoon.’
+
+They sat under the limes for a couple of hours, talking a little now
+and then in a desultory way; Martha trying her hardest to impress the
+unknown with the grandeurs and splendours of Lebanon Lodge, Clapham
+Common; Daphne saying very little, content to sit in the shade and
+dream. Then having taken their fill of rest and shadow, they ventured
+out into the sun, and went to see the famous grapery, and then Martha
+looked at her watch and protested that they must go home to tea. Miss
+Toby would be expecting them.
+
+Nero went with them to the gates of the palace, and would fain have
+gone further, but Daphne begged him to leave them there.
+
+‘You would only frighten our poor governess,’ she said. ‘She would
+think it quite a terrible thing for us to have made your acquaintance.
+Please go back to your hotel at once.’
+
+‘If you command me to do so, I must obey,’ said Nero politely.
+
+He shook hands with them for the first time, gravely lifted his hat,
+and walked across to his hotel. It was on the opposite side of the
+way, a big white house, with a garden in front of it, and a fountain
+playing. The two girls stood in the shadow watching him.
+
+‘He is really very nice,’ said Martha. ‘I think mamma would like to
+have him at one of her dinner-parties. But he did not tell us anything
+about himself, did he?’
+
+Daphne did not hear her. There was hardly room in that girlish brain
+for all the thoughts that were crowding into it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+‘CURTEIS SHE WAS, DISCRETE, AND DEBONAIRE.’
+
+
+The world was nine months older since Daphne picnicked in the park
+at Fontainebleau, and the scenery of her life was changed to a
+fair English landscape in one of the fairest of English shires.
+Here, in fertile Warwickshire, within three miles of Shakespeare’s
+birthplace, within a drive of Warwick and Leamington, and Kenilworth,
+and Stoneleigh Park, to say nothing of ribbon-weaving, watch-making
+Coventry, Daphne wandered in happy idleness through the low-lying
+water-meadows, which bounded the sloping lawns and shady gardens of
+South Hill.
+
+South Hill was a gentle elevation in the midst of a pastoral valley.
+A long, low, white house, which had been added to from time to time,
+crowned the grassy slope, and from its balconied windows commanded
+one of the prettiest views in England—a landscape purely pastoral
+and rustic; low meadows through which the Avon wound his silvery way
+between sedgy banks, with here a willowy islet, and there a flowery
+creek. On one side the distant roofs and gables and tall spire of
+Stratford, seen above intervening wood and water; on the other a gentle
+undulating landscape, bounded by a range of hills purple with distance.
+
+It was not an old house. There was nothing historical about it; though
+South Hill, with between three and four hundred acres, had belonged to
+Sir Vernon Lawford’s family since the reign of Elizabeth. There had
+been an ancient mansion; but the ancient mansion, being an unhealthy
+barrack of small low rooms, and requiring the expenditure of five
+thousand pounds to make it healthy and habitable, Sir Vernon’s father
+had conceived the idea that he could make a better use of his money if
+he pulled down the old house and built himself a new one: whereupon the
+venerable pile was demolished, much to the disgust of archæologists,
+and an Italian villa rose from its ashes: a house with wide French
+windows opening into broad verandahs, delicious places in which to
+waste a summer morning, or the idle after-dinner hour watching the
+sunset. All the best rooms at South Hill faced the south-west, and the
+sunsets there seemed to Madoline Lawford more beautiful than anywhere
+else in the world. It was a house of the simplest form, built for ease
+and comfort rather than for architectural display. There were long cool
+corridors, lofty rooms below and above stairs, a roomy hall, a broad
+shallow staircase, and at one end of the house a spacious conservatory
+which had been added by Sir Vernon soon after his marriage. This
+conservatory was the great feature of South Hill. It was a lofty
+stone building, with a double flight of marble steps descending from
+the drawing-room to the billiard-room below. Thus drawing-room and
+billiard-room both commanded a full view of the conservatory through
+wide glass doors.
+
+There were melancholy associations for Sir Vernon Lawford in this wing
+which he had added to South Hill. He had built it to give pleasure to
+his first wife, an heiress, and the most amiable of women: but before
+the building was finished the first Lady Lawford was in her grave,
+leaving a baby girl of two months old behind her. The widower grieved
+intensely; but he proved no exception to the general rule that the more
+intense the sorrow of the bereaved the more speedily does he or she
+seek consolation in new ties. Sir Vernon married again within two years
+of his wife’s death; and, this time, instead of giving satisfaction
+to the county by choosing one of the best born and wealthiest ladies
+within its length and breadth, he picked up his wife somewhere on
+the Continent—a fact which in the opinion of the county was much in
+her disfavour—and when he brought her home and introduced her to his
+friends, he was singularly reticent as to her previous history.
+
+The county people shrugged their shoulders, and doubted if this
+marriage would end well. They had some years later the morbid
+satisfaction of being able to say that they had prophesied aright. The
+second Lady Lawford bore her husband two children, a boy and a girl,
+and within a year of her daughter’s birth mysteriously disappeared.
+She went to the South of France, it was said, for her lungs; though
+everybody’s latest recollection of her was of a young woman in the
+heyday of health, strength, and beauty; somewhat self-willed, very
+extravagant, inordinately fond of pleasure, and governing her husband
+with the insolence of conscious beauty.
+
+From that southern journey she never came back. Nobody ever heard
+any explicit account of her death; yet after two or three years it
+became an accepted fact that she was dead. Sir Vernon travelled a
+good deal, while his maiden sister kept house for him at South Hill,
+and superintended the rearing of his children. Madoline, daughter and
+heiress of the first Lady Lawford, was brought up and educated at home.
+Loftus, the boy, went to a private tutor at Stratford, and thence
+to Rugby, where he fell ill and died. Daphne’s childhood and early
+girlhood were spent almost entirely at school. Only a week ago she was
+still at Asnières, grinding away at the everlasting prosy old books,
+reciting Lafontaine’s fables, droning out long singsong speeches from
+Athalie or Iphigénie, teasing poor patient Miss Toby, domineering over
+Martha Dibb. And now her education was supposed to be finished, and
+she was free—free to roam like a wild thing about the lovely grounds
+at South Hill, in the water-meadows where the daffodils grew in such
+rank luxuriance; and where, years ago, when she was a little child, and
+had crowned herself with a chaplet of those yellow flowers, scarcely
+brighter than her hair, a painter-friend of her father’s had called her
+Asphodel.
+
+How well she remembered that sunny morning in early April—ages ago!
+Childhood seems so far off at seventeen. How distinctly she remembered
+the artist whose refined and gentle manners had won her childish heart!
+She had been so little praised at South Hill that her pulses thrilled
+with pleasure when her father’s friend smiled at her flower-crowned
+head and cried: ‘What a lovely picture! Look, Lawford, would not you
+like me to paint her just as she is at this moment, with her hair
+flying in the wind, and that background of rushes and blue water?’ But
+Sir Vernon turned on his heel with a curt half-muttered answer, and the
+two men walked on and left her, smoking their cigarettes as they went.
+She remembered how, in a blind childish fury, scarce knowing why she
+was angry, she tore the daffodil crown from her hair and trampled it
+under foot.
+
+To the end of his visit the painter called her Asphodel, and one
+morning finding her alone in the garden, he carried her off to the
+billiard-room and made a sketch of her head with its loose tangled
+hair: a head which appeared next year on the line at the Royal Academy
+and was raved about by all artistic London.
+
+And now it was early April again, and she was a girl in the fair dawn
+of womanhood, free to do what she liked with her life, and there were
+many things that she was beginning to understand, things not altogether
+pleasant to her womanly pride. She was beginning to perceive very
+clearly that her father did not love her, and was never likely to love
+her, that her presence in his home gave him no pleasure, that he simply
+endured her as part of the burden of life, while to her sister he gave
+love without stint or measure. True that he was by nature and habit
+selfish and self-indulgent, and that the love of such a man is at best
+hardly worth having. But Daphne would have been glad of her father’s
+love, were the affection of ever so poor a quality. His indifference
+chilled her soul. She had been accustomed to command affection; to be
+petted and praised and bowed down to for her pretty looks and pretty
+ways; to take a leading position with her schoolfellows, partly because
+she was Sir Vernon Lawford’s daughter, and partly for those subtle
+charms and graces which made her superior to the rank and file of
+school-girls.
+
+Yet, though Sir Vernon was wanting in affection for his younger
+daughter, Daphne was not unloved at South Hill. Her sister Madoline
+loved her dearly, had so loved her ever since those unforgotten summer
+days when the grave girl of nine and the toddling two-year-old baby
+wandered hand-in-hand in shrubberies and gardens, and seemed to have
+the whole domain of South Hill to themselves, Sir Vernon and Lady
+Lawford being somewhere on the Continent, and the maiden aunt being a
+lady very much in request in the best society in the neighbourhood, and
+very willing to take the utmost enjoyment out of life, and to delegate
+her duties to nurses and maids. The love that had grown up in those
+days between the sisters had been in no wise lessened by severance.
+They were as devoted to each other now as they had been in the dawn
+of life: Madoline loving Daphne with a proud protecting love; Daphne
+looking up to Madoline with intense respect, and believing in her as
+the most perfect of women.
+
+‘I’m afraid I shall never be able to leave off talking,’ said Daphne
+upon this particular April morning, when she had come in from a long
+ramble by the Avon, with her apron full of daffodils; ‘I seem to have
+such a world of things to tell you.’
+
+‘Don’t put any check upon your eloquence, darling. You won’t tire me,’
+said Madoline in her low gentle voice.
+
+She had a very soft voice, and a slow calm way of speaking, which
+seemed to most people to be the true patrician tone. She spoke like a
+person who had never been in a hurry, and had never been in a passion.
+
+The sisters were in Madoline’s morning-room, sometimes called the
+old drawing-room, as it had been the chief reception-room at South
+Hill before Sir Vernon built the west wing. It was a large airy room,
+painted white, with chintz draperies of the lightest and most delicate
+tints—apple-blossoms on a creamy ground; the furniture all of light
+woods; the china celadon or turquoise; but the chief beauty of the
+room, its hot-house flowers—tulips, gardenias, arums, hyacinths,
+pansies, grouped with exquisite taste on tables and in jardinières, on
+brackets and mantelpiece. The love of flowers was almost a passion with
+Madoline Lawford, and she was rich enough to indulge this inclination
+to her heart’s content. She had built a long line of hot-houses in one
+of the lower gardens, and kept a small regiment of gardeners and boys.
+She could afford to do this, and yet to be Lady Bountiful in all the
+district round about South Hill; so nobody ventured to blame her for
+the money she spent upon horticulture.
+
+She was a very handsome woman—handsome in that perfectly regular
+style about which there can be no difference of opinion. Some might
+call her beauty cold, but all must own she was beautiful. Her profile
+was strongly marked, the forehead high and broad, the nose somewhat
+aquiline; the mouth proud, calm, resolute, yet infinitely sweet when
+she smiled; the eyes almost black, with long dark lashes, sculptured
+eyelids, and delicately-pencilled brows. She wore her hair as she might
+have worn it had she lived in the days of Pericles and Aspasia—simply
+drawn back from her forehead, and twisted in a heavy Greek knot at the
+back of her head; no fringed locks or fluffiness gave their factitious
+charm to her face. Her beauty was of that calm statuesque type which
+has nothing to do with chic, piquancy, dash, audacity, or any of
+those qualities which go such a long way in the composition of modern
+loveliness.
+
+All her tastes were artistic; but her love of art showed itself
+rather in the details of daily life than in any actual achievement
+with brush or pencil. She worked exquisitely in crewels and silks,
+drew her own designs from natural flowers, and produced embroideries
+on linen or satin which were worthy to be hung in a picture-gallery.
+She had a truly feminine love of needlework, and was never idle—in
+this the very reverse of Daphne, who loved to loll at ease, looking
+lazily at the sky or the landscape, and making up her mind to be
+tremendously busy by-and-by Daphne was always beginning work, and
+never finishing anything; while every task undertaken by Madoline was
+carried on to completion. The very essence of her own character was
+completeness—fulfilling every duty to the uttermost, satisfying in
+fullest measure every demand which home or society could make upon her.
+
+‘I’m sure you’ll be tired of me, Lina,’ protested Daphne, kneeling on
+the fender-stool, while Madoline sat at work in her accustomed place,
+with a Japanese bamboo table at her side for the accommodation of her
+crewels. ‘You can’t imagine what a capacity I have for talking.’
+
+‘Then I must be very dull,’ murmured Madoline, smiling at her. ‘You
+have been home a week.’
+
+‘Well, certainly, you have had some experience of me; but you might
+think my loquacity a temporary affliction, and that when I had said my
+say after nearly two years of separation—oh, Lina, how horrid it was
+spending all my holidays at Asnières!—I should subside into comparative
+silence. But I shall always have worlds to tell you. It is my nature
+to say everything that comes into my mind. That’s why I got on so well
+with Dibb.’
+
+‘Was Dibb a dog, dear?’
+
+‘A dog!’ cried Daphne, with a sparkling smile. ‘No, Dibb was my
+schoolfellow—a dear good thing—stupid, clumsy, innately vulgar, but
+devoted to me. “A poor thing, but mine own,” as Touchstone says. We
+were tremendous chums.’
+
+‘I am sorry you should make a friend of any innately vulgar girl,
+Daphne dear,’ said Madoline gravely; ‘and don’t you think it rather
+vulgar to talk of your friend as Dibb?’
+
+‘We all did it,’ answered Daphne with a shrug; ‘I was always called
+Lawford. It saves trouble, and sounds friendly. You talk about Disraeli
+and Gladstone; why not Dibb and Lawford?’
+
+‘I think there’s a difference, Daphne. If you were very friendly with
+this Miss Dibb, why not speak of her by her Christian name?’
+
+‘So be it, my dearest. In future she shall be Martha, to please you.
+She really is a good inoffensive soul. Her father keeps a big shop in
+Oxford Street; but the family live in a palace on Clapham Common, with
+gardens, and vineries, and pineries, and goodness knows what. When I
+call her vulgar it is because she and all her people are so proud of
+their money, and measure everything by the standard of money. Martha
+was very inquisitive about my means. She wanted to know whether I was
+rich or poor, and I really couldn’t inform her. Which am I, Lina?’
+
+Daphne looked up at her sister as if it were a question about which
+she was slightly curious, but not a matter of supreme moment. A faint
+flush mounted to Madoline’s calm brow. The soft dark eyes looked
+tenderly at Daphne’s eager face.
+
+‘Dearest, why trouble yourself about the money question? Have you ever
+felt the inconvenience of poverty?’
+
+‘Never. You sent me everything I could possibly wish for; and I always
+had more pocket-money than any girl in the school, not excepting
+Martha; though she took care to inform me that her father could have
+allowed her ten times as much if he had chosen. No, dear; I don’t know
+what poverty means; but I should like to understand my own position
+very precisely, now that I am a woman, don’t you know? I am quite aware
+that you are an heiress; everybody at South Hill has taken pains to
+impress that fact upon my mind. Please, dear, what am I?’
+
+‘Darling, papa is not a rich man, but he——’ Madoline paled a little
+as she spoke, knowing that South Hill had been settled on her mother,
+and her mother’s children after her, and that, in all probability, Sir
+Vernon had hardly any other property in the world. ‘He will provide for
+you, no doubt. And if he were unable to leave you much by-and-by, I
+have plenty for both.’
+
+‘I understand,’ said Daphne, growing pale in her turn; ‘I am a pauper.’
+
+‘Daphne!’
+
+‘My mother had not a sixpence, I suppose; and that is why nobody ever
+speaks of her; and that is why there is not a portrait of her in this
+house, where she lived, and was admired, and loved. I was wrong to call
+Dibb vulgar for measuring all things by a money standard. It is other
+people’s measure, as well as hers.’
+
+‘Daphne, how can you say such things?’
+
+‘Didn’t I tell you that I say everything that comes into my head? Oh,
+Madoline, don’t for pity’s sake think that I envy you your wealth—you
+who have been so good to me, you who are all I have to love in this
+world! It is not the money I care for. I think I would just as soon be
+poor as rich, if I could be free to roam the world, like a man. But to
+live in a great house, waited on by an army of servants, and to know
+that I am nobody, of no account, a mere waif, the penniless daughter of
+a penniless mother—that wounds me to the quick.’
+
+‘My dearest, my pet, what a false, foolish notion! Do you think anybody
+in this house values you less because I have a fortune tied to me by
+all manner of parchment deeds, and you have no particular settlement,
+and have only expectations from a not over-rich father? Do you think
+you are not admired for your grace and pretty looks, and that by-and-by
+there will not come the best substitute which modern life can give for
+the prince of our dear old fairy tales—a good husband, who will be
+wealthy enough to give my darling all she can desire in this world?’
+
+‘I’m sure I shall hate him, whoever he may be,’ said Daphne, with a
+short, impatient sigh.
+
+Madoline looked at her earnestly, with the tender motherly look which
+came naturally to the beautiful face when the elder sister looked at
+the younger. She had put aside her crewel-work at the beginning of this
+conversation, and had given all her attention to Daphne.
+
+‘Why do you say that, dearest?’ she asked gravely.
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know, really. But I’m sure I shall never marry.’
+
+‘Isn’t it rather early to make up your mind on that point?’
+
+‘Why should it be? Hasn’t one a mind and a heart at seventeen as well
+as at seven-and-twenty? I should like well enough to have a very rich
+husband by-and-by, so that, instead of being Daphne, the pauper, I
+might be Mrs. Somebody, with ever so much a year settled upon me for
+ever and ever. But I don’t believe I shall ever see anybody I shall be
+able to care for.’
+
+‘I hope, darling, you haven’t taken it into your foolish head that you
+care for some one already. School-girls are so silly.’
+
+‘And generally fall in love with the dancing-master,’ said Daphne,
+with a laugh. ‘I think I tried rather hard to do that, but I couldn’t
+succeed. The poor man wore a wig; a dreadfully natural, dreadfully
+curly wig; like the pictures of Lord Byron. No, Lina; I pledge you my
+word that no dancing-master’s image occupies my breast.’
+
+‘I am glad to hear it,’ answered Madoline. ‘I hope there is no one
+else.’
+
+Daphne blushed rosy red. She took a gardenia from the low glass vase on
+her sister’s work-table, where the white waxen flowers were clustered
+in the centre of a circle of purple pansies, and began to pick the
+petals off slowly, one by one.
+
+‘He loves me—loves me not,’ she whispered softly, smiling all the while
+at her own foolishness, till the smile faded slowly at sight of the
+barren stem.
+
+‘Loves me not,’ she sighed. ‘You see, Fate is against me, Lina. I am
+doomed to die unmarried.’
+
+‘Daphne, do you mean that there is someone?’ faltered Madoline, more
+in earnest than it might seem needful to be with a creature so utterly
+childlike.
+
+‘There was a man once in a wood,’ said Daphne, with crimson cheeks
+and downcast eyelids, yet with an arch smile curling her lips all the
+while. ‘There was a man whom Dibb—I beg your pardon, Martha—and I once
+met in a wood in our holidays—papa would have me spend my holidays at
+school, you see—and I have thought since, sometimes—mere idle fancy, no
+doubt—that he is the only man I should ever care to marry; and that is
+impossible, for he is engaged to someone else. So you see I am fated to
+die a spinster.’
+
+‘Daphne, what do you mean? A man whom you met in a wood, and he was
+engaged—and——! You don’t mean that you and your friend Miss Dibb made
+the acquaintance of a strange man whom you met when you were out
+walking,’ exclaimed Madoline, aghast at the idea. ‘Surely you were too
+well looked after for that! You never went out walking alone, did you?
+I thought Frenchwomen were so extremely particular.’
+
+‘Of course they are,’ replied Daphne, laughing. ‘I was only drawing
+on my imagination, dearest, just to see that solemn face of yours. It
+was worth the trouble. No, Lina dear, there is no one. My heart is as
+free as my shuttlecock, when I send it flying over the roof scaring the
+swallows. And now, let us talk about your dear self. I want you to tell
+me all about Mr. Goring; about Gerald. I suppose I may call him by his
+christian name, as he is to be my brother-in-law by-and-by.’
+
+‘Your brother, dear.’
+
+‘Thank you, Lina. That sounds ever so much nicer. I am so short of
+relations. Then I shall always call him Gerald. What a pretty name!’
+
+‘He was called after his mother, Lady Geraldine.’
+
+‘I see. She represented the patrician half of his family, and his
+father the plebeian half, I believe? The father was a Dibb, was he
+not—a money-grubber?’
+
+‘His father was a very worthy man, who rose from the ranks, and made
+his fortune as a contractor.’
+
+‘And Lady Geraldine married him for the sake of his worthiness; and you
+and Gerald are going to spend his money.’
+
+‘Mr. Goring and his wife were a very united couple, I believe, Daphne.
+There is no reason why you should laugh at them.’
+
+‘Except my natural malice, which makes me inclined to ridicule good
+people. You should have said that, Madoline; for you look as if you
+meant it. Was the contractor’s name always Goring?’
+
+‘No; he was originally a Mr. Giles, but he changed his name soon after
+his marriage, and took the name of his wife’s maternal grandfather, a
+Warwickshire squire.’
+
+‘What a clever way of hooking himself on to the landed gentry!’ said
+Daphne. ‘And now, please tell me all about Gerald. Is he very nice?’
+
+‘You may suppose that I think him so,’ answered Madoline, going on with
+the fashioning of a water-lily on a ground of soft gray cloth. ‘I can
+hardly trust myself to praise him, for fear I should say too much.’
+
+‘How is it that I have seen no photograph of him? I expected to see
+half-a-dozen portraits of him in this room alone; but I suppose you
+have an album crammed with his photos somewhere under lock and key.’
+
+‘He has not been photographed since he was a school-boy. He detests
+photography; and though he has often promised me that he would
+sacrifice his own feelings so far as to be photographed, he has never
+kept his word.’
+
+‘That is very bad of him,’ said Daphne. ‘I am bursting with curiosity
+about his looks. But—perhaps,’ she faltered, with a deprecating air,
+‘the poor thing is rather plain, and that is why he does not care to be
+photographed.’
+
+‘No,’ replied Madoline, with her gentle smile; ‘I do not think his
+worst enemy could call him plain—not that I should love him less if he
+were the plainest of mankind.’
+
+‘Yes, you would,’ exclaimed Daphne, with conviction. ‘It is all very
+well to talk about loving a man for his mind, or his heart, and all
+that kind of thing. You wouldn’t love a man with a potato-nose or a
+pimply complexion, if he were morally the most perfect creature in the
+universe. I am very glad my future brother is handsome.’
+
+‘That is a matter of opinion—I don’t know your idea of a handsome man.’
+
+‘Let me see,’ paid Daphne, clasping her bands above her head, in a
+charmingly listless attitude, and giving herself up to thought. ‘My
+idea of good looks in a man? The subject requires deliberation. What
+do you say to a pale complexion, inclining to sallowness; dreamy eyes,
+under dark straight brows; forehead low, yet broad enough to give room
+for plenty of brains; mouth grave, and even mournful in expression,
+except when he smiles—the whole face must light up like a god’s when he
+smiles; hair darkest brown, short, straight, silky?’
+
+‘One would think you had seen Mr. Goring, and were describing him,’
+said Madoline.
+
+‘What, Lina, is he like that?’
+
+‘It is so difficult to realise a description, but really yours might do
+for Gerald. Yet, I daresay, the image in your mind is totally different
+from that in mine.’
+
+‘No doubt,’ answered Daphne, and then, with a half-breathed sigh, she
+quoted her favourite Tennyson. ‘No two dreams are alike.’
+
+‘You will be able to judge for yourself before long,’ said Madoline;
+‘Gerald is coming home in the autumn.’
+
+‘The autumn!’ cried Daphne. ‘That is an age to wait. And then, I
+suppose, you are to be married immediately?’
+
+‘Not till next spring, That is my father’s wish. You see, I don’t come
+of age till I’m twenty-five, and there are settlements and technical
+difficulties. Papa thought it best for us to wait, and I did not wish
+to oppose him.’
+
+‘I believe it is all my father’s selfishness. He can’t bear to lose
+you.’
+
+‘Can I be angry with him for that?’ asked Madoline, smiling tenderly
+at the thought of her father’s love. ‘I am proud to think that I am
+necessary to his happiness.’
+
+‘But there is your happiness—and Mr. Goring’s—to be considered. It has
+been such a long engagement, and you have been kept so much apart. It
+must have been a dreary time for you. If ever I am engaged I hope my
+young man will always be dancing attendance upon me.’
+
+‘My father thought it best that we should not be too much together,
+for fear we should get tired of each other,’ said Madoline, with an
+incredulous smile; ‘and as Gerald is very fond of travelling, and
+wanted change after the shock of his mother’s death, papa proposed
+that he should spend the greater part of his life abroad until my
+twenty-fifth birthday. The separation would be a test for us both, my
+father thought.’
+
+‘A most cruel, unjustifiable test,’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘Your
+twenty-fifth birthday, forsooth! Why, you will be an old woman before
+you are married. In all the novels I ever read, the heroine married
+before she was twenty, and even then she seemed sometimes quite an old
+thing. Eighteen is the proper age for orange-blossoms and a Brussels
+veil.’
+
+‘That is all a matter of opinion, pet. I don’t think young lady
+novelists of seventeen and eighteen have always the wisest views of
+life. You must not say a word against your father, Daphne. He always
+acts for the best.’
+
+‘I never heard of a domestic tyrant yet of whom that could not be
+said,’ retorted Daphne. ‘However, darling, if you are satisfied, I am
+content; and I shall look forward impatiently to the autumn, and to the
+pleasure of making my new brother’s acquaintance. I hope he will like
+me.’
+
+‘No fear of that, Daphne.’
+
+‘I am not at all sure of winning his regard. Look at my father! I would
+give a great deal to be loved by him, yet he detests me.’
+
+‘Daphne! How can you say such a thing?’
+
+‘It is the truth. Why should I not say it? Do you suppose I don’t
+know the signs or aversion as well as the signs of love? I know that
+you love me. You have no need to tell me so. I do not even want the
+evidence of your kind acts. I am assured of your love. I can see it in
+your face; I can hear it in every tone of your voice. And I know just
+as well that my father dislikes me. He kept me at a distance as long
+as ever he could, and now that duty—or his regard for other people’s
+opinion—obliges him to have me at home, he avoids me as if I were a
+roaring lion, or something equally unpleasant.’
+
+‘Only be patient, dear. You will win his heart in time,’ said
+Madoline soothingly. She had put aside the water-lily, and had drawn
+her sister’s fair head upon her shoulder with caressing fondness. ‘He
+cannot fail to love my sweet Daphne when he knows her better,’ she said.
+
+‘I don’t know that. I fancy he was prejudiced against me when I was a
+little thing and could scarcely have offended him; unless it were by
+cutting my teeth disgustingly, or having nettlerash, or something of
+that kind. Lina, do you think he hated my mother?’
+
+Madoline started, and flushed crimson.
+
+‘Daphne! what a question! Why, my father’s second marriage was a
+love-match, like his first.’
+
+‘Yes, I suppose he was in love with her, or he would hardly have
+married a nobody,’ said Daphne, in a musing tone; ‘but he might have
+got to hate her afterwards.’
+
+At this moment the door was opened, and a voice, full, round, manly in
+tone, said: ‘Madoline, I want you.’
+
+Lina rose hastily, letting her work fall out of her lap, kissed Daphne,
+and hurried from the room at her father’s summons.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+‘THOU LOVEST ME, THAT WOT I WEL CERTAIN.’
+
+
+Many a time since her home-coming had Daphne been on the point of
+telling her sister all about that more or less anonymous traveller,
+whom she called the man in the wood; but her picnicking adventures,
+looked at retrospectively from the strictly-correct atmosphere of home,
+seemed much more terrible than they had appeared to her at Asnières;
+where a vague hankering after forbidden pleasures was an element in
+the girlish mind, and where there was a current idea that the most
+appalling impropriety was allowable, provided the whole business were
+meant as a joke. But Daphne, seated at Madoline’s feet, began to feel
+doubtful if there were any excuse for such joking; and, after that
+one skirmishing approach to the subject, she said no more about the
+gentleman who had called himself Nero. It was hateful to her to have a
+secret, were it the veriest trifle, from her sister; but the idea of
+Madoline’s disapproval was still more repugnant to her; and she was
+very certain that Madoline would disapprove of the whole transaction in
+which Mr. Nero had been concerned.
+
+‘I could never tell her how thoroughly at home I felt with him,’ mused
+Daphne; ‘how easy and natural our acquaintance seemed—just as if we
+had been destined from the very beginning of time to meet at that hour
+and at that spot. And to part so soon!’ added Daphne with a sigh. ‘It
+seemed hardly worth while to meet.’
+
+Yes; it was a mystery upon which Daphne brooded very often in the fair
+spring weather, as she wandered by her beloved river. Strange that two
+lives should meet and touch for a moment, like circles on yonder placid
+water—meet, and touch, and part, and never meet again!
+
+‘The rings on the river break when they touch,’ thought Daphne. ‘They
+are fatal to each other. Our meeting had no significance: two summer
+days and it was all over and ended. I wonder whether Nero ever thought
+of Poppæa after he left Fontainebleau? Poppæa! What a silly name; and
+what a simpleton he must have thought me for assuming it.’
+
+Of all things at South Hill, where there was so much that was
+beautiful, Daphne loved the river. It had been her delight when she
+was a tiny child, hardly able to syllable the words that were meant to
+express admiration. She had wanted to walk into the water—had struggled
+in her nurse’s arms to get at it, and make herself a part of the thing
+that seemed so beautiful. Then when she was just a little older and
+a little wiser, it had been her delight to sit on the very edge of
+the stream, to sit hidden in the rushes, spelling out a fairy tale.
+In those early days she would have been happy if the world had begun
+and ended in those low-lying meadows where daffodils, and orchises,
+and blue-bells grew in such rich abundance that she could gather and
+waste them all day long, yet make no perceptible difference in their
+number; where the lazy cattle stood half the day breast-high in the
+weedy water, dreaming with wide open eyes; where the shadow of a bird
+flitting across the stream was the only thing that gave token of
+life’s restlessness. Later there came a happy midsummer holiday when
+her father was away at Ems, nursing his last fancied disorder, and she
+and Madoline were alone together at South Hill under the protection of
+the maiden aunt, who never interfered with anybody’s pleasure so long
+as she could enjoy her own way of life; and in a willow-shaded creek
+Daphne found a disused forgotten punt which had lain stagnant in the
+mud for the last seven years, and with the aid of a youth who worked in
+the gardens she had so patched and caulked and painted this derelict
+as to make it tolerably water-tight, and in this frail and clumsy
+craft she had punted herself up and down a shallow tributary of the
+deep swift Avon, as far afield as she could go without making Madoline
+absolutely miserable.
+
+And now being ‘finished,’ and a young woman, Daphne asked herself where
+she was to get a boat. She had plenty of pocket-money. There was an old
+boat-house under one of the willows where she could keep her skiff. She
+had learnt to swim at Asnières, so there could be no danger. So she
+took counsel with the garden youth, who had grown into a man by this
+time, and asked him whether he could buy her a boat, and where.
+
+‘That’s accordin’ to the kind o’ boat as you might fancy, miss,’
+answered her friend. ‘There’s a many kind o’ boats, you see.’
+
+‘Oh, I hardly know; but I should like something light and pretty, a
+long, narrow boat, don’t you know?’ and Daphne went on to describe an
+outrigger.
+
+‘Lord, miss, it would be fearful dangerous. You’d be getting he among
+the weeds, and upsettin’ un. You’d better have a dingey. That’s safe
+and comfortable like.’
+
+‘A dingey’s a thing like a washing-tub, isn’t it?’
+
+‘Rayther that shape, miss.’
+
+‘I wouldn’t sit in such a thing for the world. No, Bink, if I can’t
+have a long, narrow boat with a sharp nose, I’ll have a punt. I think
+I should really like a punt. I was so fond of that one. I feel quite
+sorry that the rats ate it. Yes; you must buy me a punt. There’ll
+be plenty of room in it for my drawing-board, and my books, and my
+crewel-work; for I mean to live on the river when the summer comes. How
+soon can you buy me my punt?’
+
+‘I think as how you’d better have a dingey, miss,’ said Bink. ‘It was
+all very well pushing about a punt in the creeks when you was a child,
+but a punt don’t do in deep water. You can have a nice-shaped dingey,
+not too much of a tub, you know, and a pair o’ sculls, and I’ll teach
+you to row. I can order it any arternoon that I can get an ’oliday,
+miss. There’s a good boat-builder at Stratford. I’ll order he to build
+it.’
+
+‘How lovely,’ cried Daphne, clapping her hands. ‘A boat built on
+purpose for me! It must have no end of cushions, for my sister will
+come with me very often, of course. And it must be painted in the early
+English style. I’ll have a dark red dado.’
+
+‘A what, miss?’
+
+‘A dado, Bink. The lower half of the inside must be painted dark red,
+and the upper half a lovely cream colour; and the outside must be a
+dark greenish-brown. You understand, don’t you?’
+
+‘Not over well, miss. You’d better write it down for the boat-builder.’
+
+‘I’ll do better than that, Bink—I’ll make a sketch of the boat, and
+paint it the colours I want. And it—she—must have a name, I suppose.’
+
+‘Boats has names mostly, miss.’
+
+‘My boat shall not be nameless. I’ll call her——’ A pause, then a sudden
+dimpling smile and a bright blush, loveliness thrown away on Bink, who
+stood at ease leaning on his hoe and staring at the river. ‘I’ll call
+her—Nero.’
+
+‘An ’ero, miss. What ’ero? The old Dook o’ Wellington? He were an
+’ero, warn’t he? Or Nelson? That’s more of a name for a boat.’
+
+‘Nero, Bink, Nero. I’ll write it down for the boat-builder.’
+
+‘You’d better, please, miss. I never was good at remembering names.’
+
+When Daphne had given Bink the sketch, with full authority to
+commission her boat, she had an after-thought about her father. The
+boat-house was his property; even the river in some measure belonged
+to him; he had at least riparian rights. So after dinner that evening,
+when Madoline and she were sitting opposite each other in silence
+at the pretty table, bright with velvety gloxinias and maidenhair
+ferns, while Sir Vernon leant back in his chair, sipping his claret,
+and grumbling vaguely about things in general, the indolence of his
+servants, the unfitness of his horses, the impending ruin of the land
+in which he lived, and the crass ignorance of the pig-headed body
+of men who were pretending to govern it, Daphne, in a pause of the
+paternal monologue, lifted up her voice.
+
+‘Papa, may I have a dingey, please? I can buy it with my own money.’
+
+‘A dingey!’ exclaimed Sir Vernon. ‘What in Heaven’s name is a dingey?’
+
+He had an idea that it must be some article of female attire or of
+fancy-work, since his frivolous young daughter desired to possess it.
+
+‘A dingey—is—a kind of boat, papa.’
+
+‘On, a dingey!’ exclaimed Sir Vernon, as if she had said something else
+in the first instance. ‘What can you want with a dingey?’
+
+‘I am so dearly fond of the river, papa; and a dingey is such a safe
+boat, Bink says.’
+
+‘Who is Bink?’
+
+‘One of the under gardeners.’
+
+‘A curious authority to quote. So you want a dingey, and to row
+yourself about the river like a boy.’
+
+‘There is no one to notice me, papa.’
+
+‘The place is secluded enough, so long as you don’t go beyond our own
+meadows. I desired Madame Tolmache to have you taught swimming. Can you
+swim?’
+
+‘Yes, papa. I believe I am a rather good swimmer.’
+
+‘Well, you can have your boat—it is a horribly masculine taste—always
+provided you do not go beyond our own fields. I cannot have you boating
+over half the county.’
+
+‘I shall be quite happy to keep to our own fields, papa,’ Daphne
+answered meekly.
+
+She enlisted the devoted Bink in her service next morning; he patched
+up the old boat-house, and whitewashed the inside walls; much to
+the displeasure of Mr. MacCloskie, the head gardener, a gentleman
+in broadcloth and a top-hat, who seemed to do little more than walk
+about the grounds, smoke his pipe in the hot-houses, plan expensive
+improvements, and order costly novelties from the most famous nurseries
+at home and abroad. Bink ought to have been wheeling manure from the
+stable during that very afternoon which he had devoted to the repair of
+the boat-house; and Mr. MacCloskie declared that the future well-being
+of his melon-bed was imperilled by the young man’s misconduct.
+
+‘I shall complain to Sir Vernon,’ said MacCloskie.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, Mr. MacCloskie, but Miss Daphne told me to do it.’
+
+‘Miss Daphne, indeed! I can’t have my gardeners interfered with by Miss
+Daphne,’ exclaimed MacCloskie; as much as to say that his master’s
+second daughter was a person of very small account.
+
+He gave Daphne a lecture that evening, in very broad Scotch, when he
+met her in the rose-garden.
+
+‘You’ll be meddling with my roses next, miss, I suppose,’ he said
+severely. ‘You young ladies from boarding-school have no respect for
+anything.’
+
+‘Your roses!’ cried Daphne, with a contemptuous glance at the
+closely-pruned twigs of the standards, which at this early period
+looked as if they would never flower again. ‘When I see any I shall
+know how to appreciate them. Roses, indeed! I wonder you like to
+mention them. Everything flowers a month earlier in France than you
+can make it do here. I had a finer Gloire de Dijon nodding in at my
+window at Asnières this time last year than you ever saw in your life’;
+and she marched off, leaving MacCloskie with a dim idea that in any
+skirmish with this young lady he was likely to be worsted.
+
+How ardently she had longed for home a few weeks ago, when she was
+counting the days that must pass before the appointed date of her
+return, under the wing of Madame Tolmache, who crossed the Channel
+reluctantly once or twice a year to escort pupils, and was prostrate in
+the cabin throughout the brief sea-passage, leaving the pupils to take
+care of themselves, and so horribly ill on landing that the pupils had
+to take care of her. So long as South Hill was in the future Daphne
+had believed that perfect happiness awaited her there—gladness without
+a flaw—but now that she was at home, established, a recognised member
+of the family for all her life to come, she began to discover that
+even at South Hill life was not perfect happiness. She was devotedly
+fond of Madoline, and Madoline was full of affection—careful, anxious,
+almost maternal love—for her. There was no flaw in her gladness here.
+But every hour she spent in her father’s company made her more certain
+of the one painful fact that he did not care for her. There was even
+in her mind the terrible suspicion that he actually disliked her; that
+he would have been glad to have her out of his way—married, dead and
+buried—anything so that she might be removed from his path.
+
+She was very young, and her spirits had all the buoyancy of youth that
+has never been acquainted with sordid cares. So there was plenty of
+gladness in her life. It was only now and then that the thought of her
+father’s indifference, or possible dislike, drifted like a passing
+cloud across her mind, and took the charm out of everything.
+
+‘What a lovely place it is!’ she said to Madoline, one evening after
+dinner, when they were strolling about the lawn, where three of the
+finest deodaras in the county rose like green towers against the warm
+western sky; ‘I am fonder of it every day, yet I can’t help feeling
+that I’m an interloper.’
+
+‘Daphne! You—the daughter of the house!’
+
+‘A daughter; not the daughter,’ answered Daphne. ‘Sometimes I fancy
+that I am a daughter too many. You should have heard how MacCloskie
+talked to me yesterday because I had taken Bink from his work for an
+hour or two. If I had been a poor little underpaid nursery governess
+he couldn’t have scolded me more severely. And I think servants have a
+knack of finding out their master’s feelings. If I had been a favourite
+with my father, MacCloskie would never have talked like that. A
+favourite! What nonsense! It is so obvious that I bore him awfully.’
+
+‘Daphne, if you are going to nurse this kind of fancy you will never
+be happy,’ Madoline said earnestly, winding her arm round her sister,
+as they sauntered slowly down the sloping lawn, side by side. ‘You
+must make every allowance for papa; he is not a demonstrative man. His
+manner may seem cold, perhaps—’
+
+‘Cold!’ cried Daphne; ‘it is ice. I feel I have entered the frigid zone
+directly I go into his presence. But he is not cold to you; he has love
+enough, and to spare, for you.’
+
+‘We have been so much together. I have learned to be useful to him.’
+
+‘Yes; you have spent your life with him, while I have been an outcast
+and an alien.’
+
+‘Daphne, you have no right to speak like that. My father is a man of
+peculiar temper. It pleased him to have only one daughter at home
+till both were grown up. You were more lively than I—younger by seven
+years—and he fancied you would be noisy. He is a nervous man, wanting
+an atmosphere of complete repose. And now you are grown up, and have
+come home for good; and I really cannot see any reason why you should
+complain.’
+
+‘No; there is nothing to complain about,’ cried Daphne bitterly, ‘only
+that I have been cheated out of a father’s love. Not by you, Lina
+dearest; no, not by you,’ she exclaimed, when her sister would have
+spoken. ‘I am not base enough to be jealous of you; you who have been
+my good angel always. No, dear; but he has cheated me. My father has
+cheated me in not giving me a chance of getting at his heart when I was
+a child. What is the good of my trying now? I come home to him as a
+stranger. How can he be expected to care for me?’
+
+‘If he does not love you now, my pet—and mind, I don’t admit that it
+is so—he will soon learn to be fond of you. He can’t help admiring my
+sweet young sister,’ said Madoline, with tearful eyes.
+
+‘I will never plague you about him any more, dear,’ protested Daphne,
+with a penitent air. ‘I will try to be satisfied with your affection.
+You do love me, don’t you?’
+
+‘With all my strength.’
+
+‘And to do my duty in that state of life, etc., etc., etc.’
+
+‘Talking of duty, Daphne, I have been wanting to make a suggestion for
+the last week or two,’ said Madoline gently. ‘Don’t you think it would
+be better for you if you were to employ yourself a little more?’
+
+‘Employ myself!’ cried Daphne. ‘Why, I have been tremendously busy for
+the last three days—about the dingey.’
+
+‘Dearest, you are laughing at me. I mean that at seventeen—’
+
+‘And a half,’ interjected Daphne, with dignity.
+
+‘At seventeen your education can hardly be completed.’
+
+‘I know ridiculously little, though I have been outrageously crammed.
+I’m afraid all the sciences and languages and literature have got
+mixed up in my brain, somehow,’ said Daphne; ‘but I am awfully fond of
+poetry. I know a good deal of Tennyson by heart. I could repeat every
+line of “The Lotos Eaters,” if you asked me,’ said Daphne, blushing
+unaccountably.
+
+‘I think you ought to read, dear,’ pursued Madoline gravely.
+
+‘Why, so I do. Didn’t I read three volumes of “Sair for Somebody,” in a
+single day, in order that the book might go back to Mudie’s?’
+
+‘That rubbishing story! Daphne dear, you know I am talking of serious
+reading.’
+
+‘Then you had better find somebody else to talk to,’ said Daphne.
+‘I never could pin my mind to a dull book; my thoughts go dancing
+off like butterflies, skimming away like swallows. I could no more
+plod through a history, or a volume of “Voyages in Timbuctoo,” or
+“Sir Somebody’s Memoirs at the Court of Queen Joan of Naples,” or “A
+Waiting-woman’s Recollections of Peter the Great,” than I could fly.
+There are a few characters in history I like to read about—in short
+instalments. Napoleon the Great, for instance. There is a hero for
+you—bloodthirsty, but nice. Mary Stuart, Julius Cæsar, Sir Walter
+Raleigh, Columbus, Shakespeare. These shine out like stars. But the
+dull dead level of history—the going out of the Whigs and the coming
+in of the Tories, the everlasting battles in the Netherlands or the
+Punjaub! I envy you your faculty of taking interest in such dry-as-dust
+stuff, but I cannot imitate you.’
+
+‘I like to be able to talk to papa—and to Gerald, by-and-by,’ said
+Madoline shyly.
+
+‘Does papa talk of the Punjaub?’
+
+‘Not often, dear; but in order to understand the events of one’s own
+day, it is necessary to know the history of the past. Papa likes to
+discuss public affairs, and I generally read the _Times_ to him every
+morning, as you know.’
+
+‘Yes,’ answered Daphne; ‘I know you are his slave.’
+
+‘Daphne, it is my delight to be useful to him.’
+
+‘Yes; that is the sort of woman you are, always sacrificing your own
+happiness for other people. But I love you for it, dearest,’ exclaimed
+Daphne, with one of her sudden gushes of affection. ‘Only don’t ask me
+to improve myself, darling, now that I am tasting perfect liberty for
+the first time in my life. Think how I have been ground and polished
+and governessed and preached at, and back-boarded,’ drawing up her slim
+figure straight as an arrow, ‘and dumb-belled, and fifth-positioned,
+for so many weary years of my life, and let me have my fling of
+idleness at home. I began to wonder if I really had a home, my father
+kept me away from it so long. Let me be idle and happy, Lina, for a
+little while; I shall mend by-and-by.’
+
+‘My pet, do you suppose I don’t wish you to be happy? But I don’t want
+your education to come to a full stop, because you have left school.’
+
+‘Let me learn to be like you, if I can. There could be no higher
+education than that.’
+
+‘Flatterer!’
+
+‘No, Lina, no one can flatter perfection.’
+
+Madoline stopped her with a kiss, blushing at her praise. And then they
+turned and walked slowly back to the house, across the dewy lawn, where
+the shadows of the deodaras had deepened and lengthened with the rising
+of the moon. Daphne paused on the terrace to look back at the low-lying
+river gleaming between its willowy banks—so beautiful and ghostly a
+thing in the moonlight that it almost seemed as if it belonged to
+another world.
+
+‘How lovely it is out of doors!’ sighed Daphne. ‘Doesn’t it seem
+foolishness to shut oneself up in a house? Stay a little longer, Lina.’
+
+‘Papa would not like to be deserted, dear. And Aunt Rhoda talked about
+coming in this evening.’
+
+‘Then I am in for a lecture,’ said Daphne. ‘Aunt Rhoda told me to go
+and see her, and I haven’t been.’
+
+There was a brilliant light in the billiard-room, and the two girls
+went in through the conservatory and down the marble steps to the room
+where they were most likely to find their father at this time of the
+evening. Sir Vernon Lawford was not an enthusiastic billiard-player;
+indeed, he was not enthusiastic about anything, except his own merits,
+of which he had a very exalted opinion. He played a game of billiards
+every evening, because it kept him awake and kept him in gentle
+movement, which state of being he considered good for his health. He
+played gravely, as if he were doing his duty to society, and played
+well; and though he liked to have his elder daughter in the room while
+he played, and could bring himself to tolerate the presence of other
+people, he resented anything distracting in the way of conversation.
+
+Seen in the bright white light of the carcel lamps, Sir Vernon Lawford,
+at fifty-three years of age, was still a handsome man—a tall, well
+set up man, with a hard, clearly chiselled face, eyes of lightish
+gray, cold and severe in expression, gray hair and whiskers, hands
+of feminine delicacy in shape and colour, and something rigid and
+soldierlike in his bearing, as of a man who had been severely drilled
+himself, and would be a martinet in his rule over others.
+
+He was bending over the table with frowning brow, meditating a
+difficult stroke, as the two girls came softly in through the wide
+doorway—two tall slim figures in white gowns, with a background of
+flowers and palms showing dimly behind them, and beyond the foliage and
+flowers, the glimmer of a marble balustrade.
+
+A fashionably-dressed lady of uncertain age, the solitary spectator of
+the game, sat fanning herself in silence by the wide marble fire-place.
+
+Sir Vernon’s antagonist came quietly forward to greet Madoline and her
+sister.
+
+‘I am so glad you have come in,’ he said confidentially. ‘I am getting
+ignominiously licked. I had a good mind to throw up the sponge and bolt
+out into the garden after you just now; only I thought if I didn’t take
+my licking decently, Sir Vernon would never play with me again. Isn’t
+it too delicious out there among the deodaras?’
+
+‘Heavenly,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘and the river looks like the _chemin du
+Paradis_. I wonder you can stay in this glaring room.’
+
+Sir Vernon had made up his mind by this time, and with a slow and
+gentle stroke, made a cannon and sent his adversary’s ball into a
+pocket.
+
+‘Just like my luck,’ said the adversary, while Sir Vernon again
+deliberated.
+
+He was a man of about seven-and-twenty, tall, broad-shouldered,
+good-looking, with something of a gladiatorial air in his billiard-room
+undress. He was fair, with a healthy Saxon colour, and Saxon blue
+eyes; features not chiselled, but somewhat heavily moulded, yet
+straight and regular withal; hair, a lightish brown, cropped closely
+to a well-shaped head; forehead, fairly furnished with intellectual
+organs, but not the brow of poet or philosopher, wit or savant: a good
+average English forehead, a good average English face, beaming with
+good-nature, as he stands by Madoline’s side, chalking his cue as
+industriously as if chalk could win the game.
+
+This was Edgar Turchill, of Hawksyard Grange, Sir Vernon Lawford’s
+most influential and pleasantest neighbour, a country squire of old
+family and fair fortune, owner of one of the most interesting places in
+the county, a real Warwickshire manor-house, and the only son of his
+widowed mother.
+
+The lady by the fire-place now began to think she had been neglected
+long enough, and beckoned Daphne with her fan. She beckoned the girl
+with an authoritative air which distinctly indicated relationship.
+
+‘Come here and sit by me, child,’ she whispered, tapping the
+fender-stool with the point of her embroidered shoe, whereupon Daphne
+meekly crouched at the lady’s feet, prepared for the worst. ‘Why have
+you never been to the Rectory?’
+
+Daphne twisted her fingers in and out of her slender watch-chain with
+an embarrassed air.
+
+‘Indeed, I hardly know why, Aunt Rhoda,’ she faltered; ‘perhaps it was
+because I was enjoying myself so much. Everything at home was so new to
+me, you see—the gardens, the river, the meadows.’
+
+‘You were enjoying yourself so much that you had no inclination to see
+your aunt and uncle?’
+
+‘Uncle?’ echoed Daphne. ‘Oh, you mean the Rector?’
+
+‘Of course. Is he not your uncle?’
+
+‘Is he, aunt? I know he’s your husband; but as you only married him a
+year ago, and he hadn’t begun to be my uncle when I was last at home,
+it never occurred to me——’
+
+‘That by my marriage with him he had become your uncle. That looks like
+ignorance, Daphne, or want of proper feeling,’ said the Rector’s wife
+with an offended air.
+
+‘It was ignorance, Aunt Rhoda. At Madame Tolmache’s they taught us so
+much geography and geology and astronomy, don’t you know, that they
+were obliged to keep us in the dark about uncles and aunts. And am I
+really to call the Rector, uncle? It seems quite awful.’
+
+‘Why awful?’
+
+‘Because I have looked up to him all my life as a being in a black silk
+gown who preached long sermons and would do something awful to me if
+I laughed in church. I looked upon him as the very embodiment of the
+Church, don’t you know, and should hardly have believed that he wanted
+breakfast and dinner, and wore out his clothes and boots like other
+men. When he came to call I used to run away and hide myself. I had an
+idea that he would scold me if I came in his way—take me to task for
+not being a christian, or ask me to repeat last Sunday’s Gospel. And to
+think that he should be my uncle. How curiously things come round in
+this life!’
+
+‘I hope you will not cease to respect him, and that you will learn to
+love him,’ said Aunt Rhoda severely.
+
+‘Learn to love him! Do you think he would like it?’ asked Daphne
+doubtfully.
+
+‘He would like you to behave to him as a niece ought, Daphne. Marmaduke
+considers my relations his own.’
+
+‘I’m sure it is very good of him,’ said Daphne, ‘but I should think it
+must come a little difficult after having known us so long in quite
+another capacity.’
+
+The Rector’s wife gave her niece a look of half interrogation, half
+disapproval. She did not know how much malice might lurk under the
+girl’s seeming innocence. She and Daphne had never got on very well
+together in the old days, when Miss Lawford was the mistress of South
+Hill, and the arbiter of her nieces’ lives.
+
+A year ago, and Rhoda Lawford, at three-and-forty, was still Rhoda
+Lawford; and any idea of matrimonial promotion which she had once
+cherished might fairly be supposed to have expired in the cold shade
+of a neighbourhood where there were very few marriageable men. But
+Rhoda had begun life as a girl with considerable pretensions. She had
+never asserted herself or been put forward by her friends as a beauty.
+The material for that kind of reputation was wanting. But she had been
+admired and praised for her style, her manner, her complexion, her
+hair, her hands, her feet, her waist, her shoulders. She was a young
+lady with good points, and had been admired for her points. People had
+talked of her as the elegant Miss Lawford: and as, happily, elegance
+is a quality which time need not impair, Rhoda had gone on being
+elegant for five-and-twenty years. The waist and shoulders, the hands
+and feet, had never been out of training for a quarter of a century.
+More ephemeral charms had bloomed and faded; and many a fair friend
+of Rhoda’s who had triumphed in the insolence of conscious beauty was
+now a _passée_ matron, of whom her acquaintance said pityingly, ‘You
+have no idea how pretty that woman was fifteen years ago;’ but the
+elegant Miss Lawford’s attractions were unimpaired, and the elegant
+Miss Lawford had not yet surrendered the hope of winning a prize in the
+matrimonial lottery.
+
+The living of Baddesley-with-Arden was one of those fat sinecures
+which are usually given to men of good family and considerable private
+means. The Reverend Marmaduke Ferrers was the descendant of a race
+well rooted in the soil, and had, by the demise of two bachelor uncles
+and three maiden aunts, accumulated to himself a handsome property,
+in land, and houses, and the safer kind of public securities. These
+legacies had fallen in at longish intervals, some of the aunts being
+slow in relaxing their grip upon this world’s gear; but had all the
+wealth of a Westminster or a Rothschild been poured into the Reverend
+Marmaduke’s lap, he would not have renounced the great tithes of
+Baddesley-with-Arden, or the important, and, in a manner, judicial
+and dictatorial position which he held as Rector of those two small
+parishes. Mr. Ferrers loved the exercise of authority on a small
+scale. He had an autocratic mind, but it was a very small mind, and it
+suited him to be the autocrat of two insignificant pastoral villages,
+rather than to measure his power against the men of cities. To hector
+Giles for getting drunk on a Saturday night, to lecture Joan for her
+absence from church on Sunday, afforded the Rector as much delight as
+a bigger man might have felt in towering over the riot of a Republican
+chamber or proroguing a Rump parliament. Mr. Ferrers had been Rector
+of Baddesley thirty years, and in all that time he had never once
+thought of taking to himself a wife. He had a lovely old Rectory and a
+lovelier garden; he had the best servants in the neighbourhood—partly
+because he was a most exacting master, and partly because he paid his
+housekeeper largely, and made her responsible for everybody else. The
+whole machinery of his life worked with a delightful smoothness. He
+had nothing to gain from matrimony in the way of domestic comfort; and
+there is always the possibility of loss. Thus it happened that although
+he had gone on admiring Miss Lawford for a round dozen years, talking
+of her as a most ladylike and remarkably well-informed person, pouring
+all his small grievances into her ear, confiding to her the most
+recondite details of any little complaint from which he happened to
+suffer, consulting her about his garden, his stable, his parish, it had
+never occurred to him that he should improve his condition or increase
+his happiness by making the lady his wife.
+
+Yet, throughout this time, Rhoda Lawford had always had it in her
+mind that if all other views failed, she could wind up fairly well
+by marrying the Rector. It was not at all the kind of fate she had
+imagined for herself years ago in the freshness of her charms; but it
+would be a respectable match. Nobody could presume to pity her, or say
+that she had done badly. The Rector was ten years her senior, so nobody
+could laugh at her for marrying a youth. Altogether there would be a
+fitness and a propriety about the alliance, which would be in perfect
+harmony with the elegance of her person and the spotlessness of her
+character. On her fortieth birthday, Miss Lawford told herself that
+the time had now come when the Rector must be taken seriously in hand,
+and taught to see what was good for himself. A friendship which had
+been meandering on for the last twelve years must be brought to a head;
+dangling attention and old-fashioned compliments must be reduced into
+something more tangible. In a word, the Rector must be converted from a
+friend into a suitor.
+
+It had taken Miss Lawford two years to open the Reverend Marmaduke’s
+eyes; but at the end of those two years the thing was done, and the
+Rector was sighing, somewhat apoplectically, for the approach of his
+wedding-day, and the privilege of claiming Rhoda for his own. The whole
+process had been carried out with such consummate tact that Marmaduke
+Ferrers had not the faintest suspicion that the matrimonial card which
+he had drawn had been forced upon him. He believed in his engagement
+as the spontaneous growth of his own mind. ‘Strange that I should have
+known you so long, my Rhoda, and only discovered lately that you were
+so dear to me,’ he murmured in his fat voice, as he dawdled with his
+betrothed in one of those shadowy Warwickshire lanes which seem made
+for the meandering of lovers. His Rhoda smiled tenderly; and then they
+began to talk about the new carpet for the Rectory drawing-room, the
+_Sèvres garniture de cheminée_ which Sir Vernon had given his sister
+for a wedding present, dwelling rather upon the objective than the
+subjective side of their position, as middle-aged lovers are apt to do.
+
+‘I hope you will not mind my keeping Todd,’ said the Rector presently,
+pausing to recover his breath, and plucking a dog-rose in absence of
+mind.
+
+‘Dearest, have I any wish in opposition to yours?’ murmured Rhoda, but
+not without a shadow of sourness in the droop of her lips, for she had
+a shrewd idea that so long as the Rector’s housekeeper, Mrs. Todd,
+remained at the Rectory, nobody else could be mistress there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+‘LOVE MAKETH ALL TO GONE MISWAY.’
+
+
+Aunt Rhoda was not a person to be set at defiance, even by Daphne,
+who was by no means a tractable spirit. She had said, ‘Come to the
+Rectory,’ and had said it with such an air of offended dignity that
+Daphne felt she must obey, and promptly, lest a worse lecture should
+befall her. So directly after luncheon on the following day she changed
+her gown, and prepared herself for the distasteful visit. Madoline was
+going to drive to Warwick with her father, so Daphne would have to
+perform her penance alone.
+
+It was a lovely afternoon in the first week of May, the air balmy and
+summer-like, the meadows looking their greenest before the golden glory
+of buttercup time. Yonder in the reedy hollows the first of the marsh
+marigolds were opening their yellow cups, and smiling up at the yellow
+sun. The walk to Arden Rectory was something over a mile, and it was
+as lovely a walk as any one need care to take; through meadows, beside
+flowery hedgerows, with the river flowing near, but almost hidden by a
+thick screen of willows; and then by one of the most delightful lanes
+in the county, a green arcade of old elms, with here a spreading oak,
+and there a mountain ash, to give variety to the foliage.
+
+Daphne set out alone, as soon as she had seen the carriage drive away
+from the door; but she was not destined to go her way unaccompanied.
+Half way down the avenue she met Mr. Turchill, strolling at a lazy
+pace, a cigar in his mouth, and a red setter of Irish pedigree at his
+heels.
+
+At sight of Daphne he threw away his cigar, and took his hands out of
+his pockets.
+
+‘I was coming up to the Hill to ask somebody to play a game of
+billiards, and everybody seems going out,’ he said.
+
+They had known him so long in an easy-going neighbourly way that he
+almost took rank as a relation. Daphne, who had spent so much of her
+life away from home, had naturally seen less of him than anybody
+else; but as she had been a child during the greater part of their
+acquaintance, he had fallen into the way of treating her as an elder
+brother might have done; and he had not yet become impressed with the
+dignity of her advancing years. For him she was still the Daphne he had
+romped with in the Christmas holidays, and whose very small pony it had
+been his particular care to get broken.
+
+‘I met Madoline and Sir Vernon going to Warwick. Why go to Warwick?
+What is there for anyone but a Cook’s tourist to do in Warwick? But I
+thought you would be at home. You haven’t a bad notion of billiards,
+and you might have helped a fellow to while away an afternoon.’
+
+‘You are like the idle boy in the spelling-book story, wanting someone
+to play with you,’ said Daphne, laughing at him. He had turned, and was
+walking beside her, the docile setter following meekly, like a dog who
+felt that he was of no consequence in the world now that the days of
+sport were done.
+
+‘Well, the hunting’s all over, don’t you know, and there’s no more
+shooting, and I never cared much for fishing, and I’ve got such a
+confoundedly clever bailiff that he won’t let me open my mouth on the
+farm. So the days do hang rather heavy on a fellow’s hands.’
+
+‘Why don’t you take to Alpine climbing?’ suggested Daphne. ‘I don’t
+mean Mont Blanc—everybody does that—but the Matterhorn, or Monte Rosa,
+or something. If I were a young man I should amuse myself in that way.’
+
+‘I don’t set an exaggerated value on my life, but when I do make up my
+mind to throw it away, I think I’ll do the thing more comfortably,’
+replied Edgar Turchill. ‘Don’t trouble yourself to suggest employment
+for me. I’m not complaining of my life. There’s a good deal of loafing
+in it, but I rather like loafing, especially when I can loaf in
+pleasant company. Where are you going, and may I go with you?’
+
+‘I am going on a duty visit to Aunt Rhoda and my new uncle. Isn’t it
+rather dreadful to have an uncle thrust upon one in that way?’
+
+‘Well,’ returned Edgar deliberately, ‘I must say if I had the choosing
+of my relations I should leave out the Rector. But you needn’t mind
+him. Practically he’s no more to you than he was before he married your
+aunt.’
+
+‘I don’t know,’ said Daphne doubtfully. ‘He may take liberties. He was
+always a lecturing old thing, and he’ll lecture ever so much more now
+that he’s a relation.’
+
+‘But you needn’t stand his lecturing. Just tell him quietly that you
+don’t hold with clerical interference in the affairs of the laity.’
+
+‘He got me ready for my confirmation, and that gave him a kind of
+hold over me,’ said Daphne. ‘You see, he found out the depth of my
+ignorance.’
+
+‘I’ll wager he’d be ploughed in a divinity exam, to-morrow,’ said
+Edgar. ‘These old heathens of village parsons got their degrees in
+a day when the dons were a set of sleepy-headed old duffers like
+themselves. But don’t let’s talk about him. What is Madoline going to
+do in Warwick?’
+
+‘She and my father are going to make some calls in the neighbourhood,
+and I believe she has a little shopping to do.’
+
+‘Why didn’t you go with them?’
+
+‘Papa does not like to have three people in the barouche. Besides, I
+had promised to call on my aunt. She talked to me quite awfully last
+night about my want of proper feeling in never having visited her in
+her new house.’
+
+‘Why didn’t you wait till she asked you to dinner? They give capital
+dinners at the Rectory, but their feeds are few and far between. I
+don’t want to say anything rude about your aunt, but she strikes me
+as a lady who has too keen an appreciation of the value of money to
+fritter it away upon other people.’
+
+‘Why don’t you say at once that she’s horribly stingy?’ said the
+outspoken Daphne. ‘I don’t think she ever spent sixpence, except upon
+her own clothes, all the time she lived in my father’s house, and I
+know she was always getting gowns and bonnets out of Madoline. I’ve
+seen her do it. But please don’t let’s talk of her any more. It’s
+rather worse than talking of him. I shall have to kiss her, and call
+her dear aunt presently, and I shall detest myself for being such a
+hypocrite.’
+
+They had gone out by the lodge-gate by this time, the lodge with its
+thatched roof and dormer window, like a big eye looking out under a
+shaggy pent-house eyebrow; the lodge by which there grew one of those
+tall deodaras which were the chief glory of the grounds at South
+Hill. They crossed the high road, and entered the meadow-path which
+led towards Arden Rectory; and the setter finding himself at large
+in a field, frisked about a little as if with a faint suspicion of
+partridges.
+
+‘Oh, by-the-by,’ began Daphne, in quite a new tone, ‘now that we are
+alone, I want you to tell me all about Lina’s engagement. Is he nice?’
+
+Edgar Turchill’s face clouded over so darkly that the look seemed a
+sufficient answer to her question.
+
+‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘You don’t like him.’
+
+‘I can’t say that. He’s an old acquaintance—a friend—a kind of family
+connection even, for his mother’s grandmother was a Turchill. But to be
+candid, I don’t like the engagement.’
+
+‘Why not, unless you know something against him?’
+
+‘I know nothing against him. He is a gentleman. He is ten times
+cleverer than I, ten times richer, a great deal handsomer—my superior
+in every way. I should be a mean cad if I couldn’t acknowledge as much
+as that. But——’
+
+‘You think Lina ought to have accepted him.’
+
+‘I think the match in every way suitable, natural, inevitable. How
+could he help falling in love with her? Why should she refuse him?’
+
+‘You are talking in riddles,’ said Daphne. ‘You say it is a suitable
+match, and a minute ago you said you did not like the engagement.’
+
+‘I say so still. Can’t you imagine a reason for my feelings?’
+
+Daphne contemplated him thoughtfully for a few moments as they walked
+on. His frank English face looked graver than she ever remembered to
+have seen it—grave to mournfulness.
+
+‘I am very sorry,’ she faltered. ‘I see. You are fond of her yourself.
+I am desperately sorry. I should have liked you ever so much better for
+a brother.’
+
+‘Don’t say that till you have seen Gerald. He has wonderful powers of
+fascination. He paints and poetises, and all that kind of thing, don’t
+you know; the sort of thing that pleases women. He can’t ride a little
+bit—no seat—no hands.’
+
+‘How dreadful!’ cried Daphne, aghast. ‘Does he tumble off?’
+
+‘I don’t mean that. He can stick in his saddle somehow; and he hunts
+when he’s at home in the season; but he can’t ride.’
+
+‘Oh,’ said Daphne, as if she were trying to understand this distinction.
+
+‘Yes, Daphne. I don’t mind your knowing it—now it’s all over and done
+with,’ pursued Edgar, glad to pour his griefs into a friendly ear.
+‘You’re my old playfellow—almost like a little sister—and I don’t think
+you’ll laugh at me, will you, dear?’
+
+‘Laugh at you!’ cried Daphne. ‘If I do may I never be able to smile
+again.’
+
+‘I asked your sister to marry me. I had gone on loving her for I don’t
+know how long, before I could pluck up courage to ask the question, I
+was so afraid of being refused. And I knew if she would only say “Yes,”
+that my mother would be the proudest woman in the county, for she
+positively adores Madoline. And I knew Lina liked Hawksyard; and that
+was encouraging. So one day, about four years ago, I got desperate,
+and asked the plain question in a plain way. Heaven knows how much
+of my happiness hung on the answer; but I couldn’t have screwed any
+poetry out of myself to save my life. I could only tell her the honest
+truth—that I loved her as well as man ever loved woman.’
+
+‘Well?’ asked Daphne.
+
+‘It was no use. She said “No,” so kindly, so sweetly, so
+affectionately—for she really likes me, you know, in a sisterly
+way—that she made me cry like a child. Yes, Daphne, I made a miserable
+ass of myself. She must have despised such unmanly weakness. And then
+in a few minutes it was all over. All my hopes were extinguished like
+a candle blown out by the wind, and all my future life was dark. And I
+had to go back and tell the poor mother that the daughter she wanted
+was never to come to Hawksyard.’
+
+‘I am so sorry for you,’ faltered Daphne.
+
+‘Thank you, dear. I knew you would be sympathetic. The blow was a
+crusher, I assure you. I went away for a few months deer-stalking
+in the Highlands; but lying on a mountain side in a gray mist for
+hours on end, not daring to move an eyelash, gives a fellow too much
+time for thought. I was always thinking of Madoline, and my thoughts
+were just two hundred and fifty miles due south of the stag when he
+came across, so I generally shot wild, and felt myself altogether a
+failure. Then I tried a month in Normandy and Brittany with a knapsack,
+thinking I might walk down my trouble. But I found that tramping from
+one badly-drained town to another badly-drained town—all infected with
+garlic—and looking at churches I didn’t particularly want to see, was a
+sham kind of consolation for a very real disappointment; so I made up
+my mind to come back to Hawksyard and live it down. And I have lived it
+down,’ concluded Edgar exultantly.
+
+‘You don’t care for Madoline any longer?’
+
+‘Not care for her! I shall worship her as long as I have breath in
+my body. But I have resigned myself to the idea that somebody else
+is going to marry her—that the most I can ever be to her is a good,
+useful, humdrum kind of friend, who will be godfather to one of her
+boys by-and-by; ready to ride helter-skelter for the doctor if any of
+her children show symptoms of measles or whooping-cough; glad to take
+dummy of an evening when she and her husband want to play whist; or to
+entertain the boys at Hawksyard for their summer holidays while she and
+he are enjoying a _tête-à-tête_ ramble in the Engadine. That is the
+sort of man I shall be.’
+
+‘How good you are!’ said Daphne, slipping her hand through his arm with
+an affectionate impulse.
+
+‘Ah, my little Daphne, it will be your turn to full in love some of
+these days; put it off as long as you can, dear, for there’s more pain
+than pleasure in it at best.’ Daphne gave an involuntary sigh. ‘And
+then I hope you’ll confide in me just as freely as I have confided
+in you. I may be useful as an adviser, you know, having had my own
+troubles.’
+
+‘You could only advise me to be patient, and give up all hope,’ said
+Daphne, drawing her hand from his arm. ‘What would be the good of
+such advice? But I shall never trouble you. I am not going to fall in
+love—ever.’
+
+She gave the last word an almost angry emphasis.
+
+‘Poor little Daphne! as if you could know anything about it,’ exclaimed
+Edgar, smiling incredulously at her. ‘That kind of thing comes upon one
+unawares. You talk as if you could choose whether you would fall in
+love or not—like Hercules between his two roads, deliberating whether
+he should go to the right or the left. Ah, my dear, when we come to
+that stage of our journey there is but one road for us: and whether it
+lead to the Garden of Eden or the Slough of Despond, we must travel
+over it.’
+
+‘You are getting poetical,’ exclaimed Daphne scornfully; ‘I didn’t know
+that was in your line. But please tell me about Gerald. I have never
+seen him, you know. He was always at Oxford, or roaming about the world
+somewhere, when I was at home for the holidays. I have been at home
+so little, you see,’ she interjected with a piteous air. ‘I used to
+hear a great deal about a very wonderful personage, enormously rich,
+fabulously clever, and accomplished, and handsome; and I grew rather to
+hate him, as one is apt to hate such perfection; and then one day I got
+a letter from Lina—a letter brimming over with happiness—to say that
+she and this demigod were engaged to be married, but it was to be a
+long engagement, because the other demigod—my father—wished for delay.
+So you see I know very little about my future brother.’
+
+‘You are sure to like him,’ said Edgar with a somewhat regretful air.
+‘He has all the qualities which please women. Another man might be as
+handsome, or even handsomer, yet not half so sure of winning a woman’s
+love. There is something languid, lackadaisical—poetical, I suppose
+Madoline would call it—in his appearance and manner which women admire.’
+
+‘I hope he is not effeminate,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I hate a womanish
+man.’
+
+‘No; I don’t think anyone could call him effeminate; but he is dreamy,
+bookish, fond of lolling about under trees, smoking cigarettes and
+reading verses.’
+
+‘I’m certain I shall detest him,’ said Daphne with conviction, ‘and
+it will be very dreadful, since I must pretend to like him for Lina’s
+sake. You must stand by me, Edgar, when he is at the Hill. You and
+I can chum together, and leave the lovers to spoon by themselves.
+Oh, by-the-by, of course you haven’t lived on the Avon all your life
+without being able to row a boat?’
+
+‘No; I can row pretty well.’
+
+‘Then you must teach me, please. I am going to have a boat, my very
+own. It is being built for me. You’ll teach me to row, won’t you,
+Edgar?’ she asked with a pleading smile.
+
+‘I shall be delighted.’
+
+‘Thanks tremendously. That will be ever so much better than learning of
+Bink.’
+
+‘Indeed! And who is Bink?’ asked Edgar, somewhat dashed.
+
+‘One of the under gardeners. Such an honest creature, and devoted to
+me.’
+
+‘I see: and your first idea was to have been taught by Bink?’
+
+‘If there had been no one else,’ she admitted apologetically. ‘You see,
+having ordered a boat, it is essential that I should learn to row.’
+
+‘Naturally.’
+
+They had arrived at the last field by this time. The village lay before
+them in the sunlight: an old gray church in an old churchyard on the
+edge of the river, a cluster of half-timbered cottages, with walls
+of wattle and dab, a homestead dwarfed by rick-yard and barns, and
+finally the Rectory, a low, many-gabled house, half-timbered, like the
+cottages, a regular sixteenth-century house, with clustered chimneys of
+massive ruddy-brown brickwork, finished by a stone coping, in which the
+martens had built from time immemorial.
+
+‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you with me,’ said Daphne as
+they came near the stile. ‘It will take the edge off my visit.’
+
+‘Oh, but I did not mean to go in with you. I only walked with you for
+the pleasure of being your escort.’
+
+‘Nonsense; you are going in, and you are going to stay till I go home,
+and you are going back with me to dinner. I’m sure you must owe Aunt
+Rhoda a call. Just consider now if you don’t.’
+
+Edgar, who had a guilty memory of being a guest at one of the Rector’s
+rare but admirable dinners, just five weeks ago, blushed as he admitted
+his indebtedness.
+
+‘I certainly haven’t called since I dined there,’ he said; ‘but the
+fact is, I don’t get on very fast with your aunt, although I’ve known
+her so long.’
+
+‘Of course not. I never knew any one who could get on with her, except
+Lina, and she’s an angel.’
+
+They came to the stile, which was what the country people call a
+tumble-down stile, all the timbers of the gate sliding down with a
+clatter when a handle is moved, and leaving space for the pedestrian
+to step over. The Rectory gate stood before them, a low wide gate,
+standing open to admit the entrance of a carriage. The garden was
+lovely, even before the season of bedding-out plants and carpet
+horticulture. For the last twenty years the Rector had annually
+imported a choice selection of Dutch bulbs, whereby his flower-beds and
+borders on this May afternoon were a blaze of colour—tulip, hyacinth,
+ranunculus, polyanthus—each and every flower that blooms in the sweet
+youth of the year; and as a background for the level lawn with its
+many flower-beds, there was a belt of such timber and an inner circle
+of such shrubs as are only to be found in a garden that has been
+cultivated and improved for a century or so. Copper beeches, Spanish
+chestnuts, curious specimens of the oak tribe, the feathery foliage
+of acacia and mountain ash, the pink bloom of the wild plum, and the
+snowy clusters of the American crab, deodara, cypress, yew, and in the
+foreground arbutus and seringa, lilac, laburnum, guelder rose, with all
+the family of laurel, laurustinus, and bay; a shrubbery so exquisitely
+kept, that not a blighted branch or withered leaf was to be seen in the
+spacious circle which fenced and protected that smiling lawn from all
+the outer world.
+
+The house was, in its way, as perfect as the garden. There were many
+rooms, but none large or lofty. The Rectory had all the shortcomings
+and all the fascinations of an old house: wide hearths and dog-stoves,
+high mantelpieces, deep-recessed casements, diamond panes, leaden
+lattices, massive roughly-hewn beams supporting the ceilings, a wide
+shallow staircase, rooms opening one out of another, irregular levels,
+dark oak floors, a little stained glass here and there—real old glass,
+of rich dark red, or sombre green, or deep dull topaz.
+
+The house was delightfully furnished, though Mr. Ferrers had never
+taken any trouble about it. Many a collector, worn out before his time
+by the fever and anxiety of long summer afternoons at Christie’s, would
+have envied Marmaduke Ferrers the treasures which had fallen to him
+without the trouble of collecting. Residuary legatee to all his aunts
+and uncles, he had taken to himself the things that were worth having
+among their goods and chattels, and had sold all the rubbish.
+
+The aunts and uncles had been old-fashioned non-locomotive people,
+hoarding up and garnering the furniture of past generations. Thus had
+the Rector acquired Chippendale chairs and tables, old Dutch tulip-wood
+cabinets and bureaus, Louis Quinze commodes, Elizabethan clocks, Derby
+and Worcester, Bow, Bristol, Leeds, and Swansea crockery, with a
+sprinkling of those dubious jugs and bowls that are generally fathered
+on Lowestoft. Past generations had amassed and hoarded in order that
+the Rector might be rich in art treasures without ever putting his hand
+in his pocket. Furniture that had cost a few pounds when it was bought
+was now worth hundreds, and the Rector had it all for nothing, just
+because he came of a selfish celibate race. The Chippendale furniture,
+the Dutch marqueterie work, old china, and old plate had all been in
+Miss Lawford’s mind when she took the Rector in hand and brought him to
+see her fitness for his wife.
+
+True that her home at South Hill was as elegant, and in all things as
+desirable; but there was a wide difference between living under the
+roof of her brother, more or less on sufferance, and being mistress
+of her own house. Thus the humbler charms of the Rectory impressed
+her more than the dignity of the Hill. Sir Vernon Lawford was not a
+pleasant man to whom to be beholden. His daughters were now grown up.
+Madoline was sovereign mistress of the house which must one day be her
+own; and Rhoda Lawford felt that to stay at the Hill would be to sink
+to the humdrum position of a maiden aunt, for whom nobody cared very
+much.
+
+Mrs. Ferrers was sitting in a Japanese chair on the lawn, in front of
+the drawing-room windows, nursing a black and white Japanese pug, and
+rather yearning for someone from the outer world, even in that earthy
+paradise where the guelder roses were all in bloom and the air was
+heavy with the odour of hawthorn-blossom.
+
+‘At last!’ she exclaimed, as Daphne and her companion made their
+timorous advance across the velvet turf, mown twice a week in the
+growing season. ‘You too, Mr. Turchill; I thought you were never coming
+to see me.’
+
+‘After that delightful evening with the Mowbrays and the people from
+Liddington! It was too ungrateful of me,’ said Edgar. ‘If you call me
+Mr. Turchill I shall think I am never to be forgiven.’
+
+‘Well, then, it shall be Edgar, as it was in the old days,’ said Mrs.
+Ferrers, with a faint suspicion of sentiment.
+
+There had been a time when it had seemed to her not altogether
+impossible that she should become Mrs. Turchill. Hawksyard Grange was
+such a delicious old place; and Edgar was her junior by only fourteen
+years.
+
+‘I don’t want you to make ceremonious calls just because you happen
+to have dined here; but I want you to drop in often because you like
+us. I want you to bring me breathings of the outside world. The life
+of a clergyman’s wife in a country parish is so narrow. I feel hourly
+becoming a vegetable.’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers looked complacently down at her tea-gown of soft creamy
+Indian silk, copiously trimmed with softer Breton lace, and felt that
+at least she was a very well-dressed vegetable. Knots of palest blue
+satin nestled here and there among the lace; a cluster of hot-house
+roses—large velvety yellow roses—reposed on Mrs. Ferrers’s shoulder,
+and agreeably contrasted with her dark, smoothly-banded hair. She
+prided herself on the classic form of her small head, and the classic
+simplicity of her coiffure.
+
+‘I think we all belong, more or less, to the vegetable tribe about
+here,’ said Mr. Turchill. ‘There is something sleepy in the very air of
+our pastoral valleys. I sometimes long to get away to the stone-wall
+country yonder, on the Cotswolds, to breathe a freer, more wakeful air.’
+
+‘I can’t say that I languish for the Cotswolds,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers,
+‘but I should very much like a fortnight in Mayfair. Do you know if
+your father and Madoline are going to London this season, Daphne?’
+
+‘I think not. Papa fancies himself not quite well enough for the
+fatigue of London, and Lina does not care about going.’
+
+It had been Sir Vernon’s habit to take a furnished house at
+the West End for part of May and June, in order to see all the
+picture-galleries, and hear all the operas that were worth being
+heard, and to do a little visiting among his very select circle of
+acquaintance. He was not a man who made new acquaintances if he could
+help it, or who went to people because they lived in big houses and
+gave big dinners. He was exclusive to a fault, detested crowds, and had
+a rooted conviction that every new man was a swindler, who was destined
+to end his career in ignominious bankruptcy. It had gone hard with him
+to consent to his daughter’s engagement with a man who on the father’s
+side was a parvenu; but he had consoled himself as best he might
+with the idea of Lady Geraldine’s blue blood, and Mr. Goring’s very
+substantial fortune.
+
+‘And so you are no longer a school-girl, Daphne, and have come home
+for good,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, dropping her elegant society manner and
+putting on a sententious air, which Daphne knew too well. ‘I hope you
+are going to try to improve yourself—for what girls learn at school is
+a mere smattering—and that you are aware how much room there is for
+improvement—in your carriage, for instance.’
+
+‘I haven’t any carriage, aunt, but papa is going to let me keep a
+boat,’ said Daphne, who had been absently watching the little yellow
+butterflies skimming above the flame-coloured tulips.
+
+‘My dear, I am talking of your deportment. You are sitting most
+awkwardly at this moment, one shoulder at least three inches higher
+than the other.’
+
+‘Don’t worry about it, aunt,’ said Daphne indifferently; ‘perhaps it’s
+a natural deformity.’
+
+‘I hope not. I think it rests with yourself to become a very decent
+figure,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, straightening her own slim waist. ‘Here
+comes your uncle, returning from his round of duty in time to enjoy his
+afternoon tea.’
+
+The Rector drove up to the gate in a low park-phaeton, drawn by a sleek
+bay cob; a cob too well fed and lazy to think of running away, but a
+little apt to become what the groom called ‘a bit above himself,’ and
+to prance and toss his head in an arrogant manner, or even to shy at
+a stray rabbit, as if he had never seen such a creature before, and
+hadn’t the least idea what the apparition meant. The Rector’s round
+of duty had been a quiet drive through elm-shadowed lanes, and rustic
+occupation roads, with an occasional pull-up before the door of a
+cottage, or a farm-house, where, without alighting, he would inquire in
+a fat pompous voice after the welfare, spiritual and temporal, of his
+parishioners, and then shedding on them the light of a benignant smile,
+or a few solemn words of clerical patronage, he would give the reins a
+gentle shake and drive off again. This kind of parochial visitation,
+lasting for about two hours, the Rector performed twice or three times
+a week, always selecting a fine afternoon. It kept him in the fresh
+air, gave him an appetite for his dinner, and maintained pleasant
+relations between the pastor and his flock.
+
+Mr. Ferrers flung the reins to his groom, a man of middle age, in sober
+dark livery, and got himself ponderously out of his carriage on to the
+gravel drive. He was a large man, tall and broad, with a high bald
+head, red-brown eyes of the protuberant order, a florid complexion,
+pendulous cheeks and chin, and mutton-chop whiskers of a warm chestnut.
+He was a man whose appearance, even to the stranger, suggested a life
+devoted to dining; a man to whom dinner was the one abiding reality of
+life, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow—a memory, an actuality,
+a hope. He was the man for whom asparagus and peas are forced into
+untimely perfection—the man who eats poached salmon in January, and
+gives a fabulous price for the first of the grouse—the man for whom
+green geese are roasted in June, and who requires immature turkeys to
+be fatted for him in October; who can enjoy oysters at fourpence a
+piece; who thinks ninety shillings a dozen a reasonable price for dry
+champagne, and would drive thirty miles to secure a few dozen of the
+late Colonel Somebody’s famous East India sherry.
+
+Rhoda had married the Reverend Marmaduke with her eyes fully opened to
+the materialistic side of his character. She knew that if she wanted
+to live happily with him and to exercise that gentle and imperceptible
+sway, which vulgar people call hen-pecking, she must make dinner the
+chief study of her life. So long as she gave full satisfaction upon
+this point; so long as she could maintain a table, in which the homely
+English virtue of substantial abundance was combined with the artistic
+variety of French cooking; so long as she anticipated the Rector’s
+fancies, and forestalled the seasons, she would be sure to please. But
+an hour’s forgetfulness of his tastes or prejudices, a single failure,
+an experimental dish, would shatter for the time being the whole fabric
+of domestic bliss, and weaken her hold of the matrimonial sceptre. The
+Rector’s wife had considered all this before she took upon herself the
+responsibilities of married life. Supremely indifferent herself to the
+pleasures of the table, she had to devote one thoughtful hour of every
+day to the consideration of what her husband would like to eat, drink,
+and avoid. She had to project her mind into the future to secure for
+him novelty of diet. Todd, the housekeeper, had ministered to him for
+many years, and knew all his tastes: but Mrs. Ferrers wanted to do
+better than Todd had done, and to prove to the Rector that he had acted
+wisely in committing himself to the dulcet bondage of matrimony. She
+was a clever woman—not bookish or highly cultured—but skilled in all
+the small arts and devices of daily life; and so far she had succeeded
+admirably. The Rector, granted the supreme indulgence of all his
+desires, was his wife’s admiring slave. He flattered her, he deferred
+to her, he praised her, he boasted of her to all his acquaintance as
+the most perfect thing in wives, just as he boasted of the sleek bay as
+the paragon of cobs, and his garden as the archetype of gardens.
+
+And now for the first time Daphne had to salute this great man in his
+new character of an uncle. She went up to him timidly; a graceful,
+gracious figure in a pale yellow batiste gown, a knot of straw-coloured
+Marguerites shining on her breast, her lovely liquid eyes darkened by
+the shadow of her Tuscan hat.
+
+‘How do you do, uncle?’ she said, holding out a slender hand, in a long
+loose Swedish glove.
+
+The Rector started, and stared at her dumbly, whether bewildered
+by so fair a vision, or taken aback by the unexpected assertion of
+kinsmanship, only he himself knew.
+
+‘Bless my soul!’ he cried. ‘Is this Daphne? Why the child has grown out
+of all knowledge. How d’ye do, my dear? Very glad to see you. You’ll
+stop to dinner, of course. You and Turchill. How d’ye do, Turchill?’
+
+The Rector had a troublesome trick of asking everybody who crossed his
+threshold in the afternoon to dinner. He had an abiding idea that his
+friends wanted to be fed; that they would rather dine with him than
+go home; and that if they refused, their refusal was mere modesty and
+self-denial, and ought not to be accepted. Vainly had Rhoda lectured
+her spouse upon this evil habit, vainly had she tried to demonstrate
+to him that an afternoon visit should be received as such, and need
+not degenerate into a dinner-party. The Rector was incorrigible.
+Hospitality was his redeeming virtue.
+
+‘Thanks awfully,’ replied Daphne; ‘but I must go home to dinner. Papa
+and Lina expect me. Of course Mr. Turchill can do as he likes.’
+
+‘Then Turchill will stay,’ said the Rector.
+
+‘My dear Rector, you are very kind, but I must go home with Daphne. I
+brought her, don’t you see, and I’m bound to take her back. There might
+be a bull, or something.’
+
+‘Do you think I am afraid of bulls?’ cried Daphne; ‘why I love the
+whole cow tribe. If I saw a bull in one of our meadows, I should walk
+up to him and make friends.’
+
+The Rector surveyed the yellow damsel with an unctuous smile.
+
+‘It would be dangerous,’ he said in his fat voice, ‘if I were the bull.’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘I should be tempted to imitate an animal famous in classic story, and
+swim the Avon with you on my back,’ replied the Rector.
+
+‘Duke,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, with her blandest smile, ‘don’t you think
+you had better rest yourself in your cool study while we take our tea?
+I’m sure you must be tired after your long drive. These first warm days
+are so exhausting. I’ll bring you your cup of tea.’
+
+‘Don’t trouble yourself, my love,’ replied the Rector; ‘Daphne can wait
+upon me. Her legs are younger than yours.’
+
+This unflattering comparison, to say nothing of the vulgar allusion to
+‘legs,’ was too much for Rhoda’s carefully educated temper. She gave
+her Marmaduke a glance of undisguised displeasure.
+
+‘I am not so ancient or infirm as to find my duties irksome,’ she said
+severely; ‘I shall certainly bring you your tea.’
+
+The Rector had a weakness about pretty girls. There was no harm in it.
+He had lived all his life in an atmosphere of beauty, and no scandal
+had ever arisen about peeress or peasant. He happened to possess an
+artistic appreciation of female loveliness, and he took no trouble to
+disguise the fact. Youth and beauty and freshness were to him as the
+very wine of life—second only to actual Cliquot, or Roederer, Clos
+Vougeot, or Marcobrünner. His wife was too well acquainted with this
+weakness. She had known it years before she had secured Marmaduke for
+her own; and she had flattered herself that she could cure him of this
+inclination to philander; but so far the curative process had been a
+failure.
+
+But Marmaduke, though inclined to folly, was not rebellious. He
+loved a gentle doze in the cool shade of his study, where there were
+old-fashioned easy-chairs of a shape more comfortable than has ever
+revealed itself to the mind of modern upholsterer. The brief slumber
+gave him strength to support the fatigue of dressing for dinner, for
+the Reverend Marmaduke was as careful of the outward man as of the
+inner, and had never been seen in slovenly attire, or with unshaven
+visage.
+
+Mrs. Ferrers sank into her chair with a sigh of relief as the Rector
+disappeared through the deep rustic porch. The irreproachable butler,
+who had grown gray in Mr. Ferrers’s service, brought the tea-tray,
+with its Japanese cups and saucers. Edgar Turchill subsided upon a
+low rustic stool at Daphne’s feet, just where his length of arm would
+enable him to wait upon the two ladies. They made a pretty domestic
+group: the westering sun shining upon them, the Japanese pug fawning at
+their feet, flowers and foliage surrounding them, birds singing, bees
+humming, cattle lowing in the neighbouring fields.
+
+Edgar looked up admiringly at the bright young face above him: eyes
+so darkly luminous, a complexion of lilies and roses, that exquisite
+creamy whiteness which goes with pale auburn hair, that lovely varying
+bloom which seems a beauty of the mind rather than of the person, so
+subtly does it indicate every emotion and follow the phases of thought.
+Yes; the face was full of charm, though it was not the face of his
+dreams—not the face he had worshipped for years before he presumed to
+reveal his love for the owner. If a man cannot win the woman he loves
+it were better surely that he should teach himself to love one who
+seems more easily attainable. The bright particular star shines afar
+off in an inaccessible heaven; but lovely humanity is here at his side,
+smiling on him, ready to be wooed and won.
+
+Edgar’s reflections did not go quite so far as this, but he felt that
+he was spending his afternoon pleasantly, and he looked forward with
+complacency to the homeward walk through the meadows.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+‘HIS HERTE BATHED IN A BATH OF BLISSE.’
+
+
+Daphne’s boat came home from the builder’s at the end of three weeks of
+longing and expectation, a light wherry-shaped boat, not the tub-like
+sea-going dingey, but a neat little craft which would have done no
+discredit to a Thames waterman. Daphne was in raptures; Mr. Turchill
+was impressed into her service, in nowise reluctant; and all the
+mornings of that happy June were devoted to the art of rowing a pair of
+sculls on the rapid Avon. Never had the river been in better condition;
+there was plenty of water, but there had been no heavy rains since
+April, and the river had not overflowed its natural limits; the stream
+ran smoothly between its green and willowy banks, just such a lenient
+tide as Horace loved to sing.
+
+When Daphne took up a new thing it was a passion with her. She was
+at the exuberant age when all fresh fancies are fevers. She had had
+her fever for water-colours, for battledore and shuttlecock, for
+crewel-work. She had risen at daybreak to pursue each new delight:
+but this fancy for the boat was the most intense of all her fevers,
+for the love of the river was a love dating from infancy, and she had
+never been able to gratify it thoroughly until now. Every evening in
+the billiard-room she addressed the same prayer to Edgar Turchill,
+when she bade him good-night: ‘Come as early as you can to-morrow
+morning, please.’ And to do her pleasure the Squire of Hawksyard rose
+at cockcrow and rode six miles in the dewy morning, so as to be at the
+boat-house in Sir Vernon’s meadow before Arden church clock struck
+seven.
+
+Let him be there as early as he might Daphne was always waiting for
+him, fresh as the morning, in her dark blue linen gown and sailor hat,
+the sleeves tucked up to the elbow to give free play to her supple
+wrists, her arms lily-white in spite of wind and weather.
+
+‘It’s much too good of you,’ said she, in her careless way, not
+ungrateful, but with the air of a girl who thinks men were created to
+wait upon her. ‘How very early you must have been up!’
+
+‘Not so much earlier than you. It is only an hour’s ride from
+Hawksyard, even when I take it gently.’
+
+‘And you have had no breakfast, I daresay.’
+
+‘I have had nothing since the tumbler of St. Galmier you poured out for
+me in the billiard-room last night.’
+
+‘Poor—dear—soul!’ sighed Daphne, with a pause after each word. ‘How
+quite too shocking! We most institute a gipsy tea-kettle. This kind of
+thing shall not occur again.’
+
+She looked at him with her loveliest smile, as much as to say: ‘I have
+made you my slave, but I mean your bondage to be pleasant.’
+
+When he came to the boat-house next morning he found a kettle singing
+gaily on a rakish-looking gipsy-stove, a table laid for breakfast
+inside the boat-house, a smoking dish of eggs and bacon, and the
+faithful Bink doing butler, rough and rustic, but devoted.
+
+‘I wonder whether she has read Don Juan?’ thought Edgar. The water,
+the gipsy breakfast, the sweet face smiling at him, reminded him of an
+episode in that poem. ‘Were I shipwrecked to-morrow I would not wish to
+awaken in a fairer paradise,’ he said to himself, while Bink adjusted
+a camp-stool for him, breathing his hardest all the time. ‘This is a
+delicious surprise,’ he exclaimed.
+
+‘The eggs and bacon?’
+
+‘No; the privilege of a _tête-à-tête_ breakfast with you.’
+
+‘Tête-à-fiddlestick; Bink is my chaperon. If you are impertinent I
+will ask Mr. MacCloskie to join us to-morrow morning. Sugar? Yes, of
+course, sugar and cream. Aren’t the eggs and bacon nice? I cooked them.
+It was Bink’s suggestion. I was going to confine myself to rolls and
+strawberry jam; but the eggs and bacon are more fun, aren’t they? You
+should have heard how they frizzled and sputtered in the frying-pan. I
+had no idea bacon was so noisy.’
+
+‘Your first lesson in cookery,’ said Edgar. ‘We shall hear of you
+graduating at South Kensington.’
+
+‘My first lesson, indeed! Why, I fried pancakes over a spirit-lamp ever
+so many times at Asnières; and I don’t know which smelt nastiest, the
+pancakes or the lamp. Our dormitory got into awful disgrace about it.’
+
+She had seated herself on her camp-stool and was drinking tea, while
+she watched Edgar eat the eggs and bacon with an artistic interest in
+the process.
+
+‘Is the bacon done?’ she asked. ‘Did I frizzle it long enough?’
+
+‘It’s simply delicious; I never ate such a breakfast.’
+
+It was indeed a meal in fairyland. The soft clear morning light, the
+fresh yet balmy atmosphere, the sunlit river and shadowy boat-house,
+all things about and around lent their enchantment to the scene. Edgar
+forgot that he had ever cared for anyone in the world except this girl,
+with the soft gray eyes and sunny hair, and all too captivating smile.
+To be with her, to watch her, to enjoy her girlishness and bright
+vivacity, to minister to her amusement and wait upon her fancies—what
+better use could a young man, free to take his pleasure where he liked,
+find for his life? And far away in the future, in the remoteness of
+years to come, Edgar Turchill saw this lovely being, tamed and sobered
+and subdued into the pattern of his ideal wife, losing no charm that
+made her girlhood lovely, but gaining the holier graces of womanhood
+and wifehood. To-day she was little more than a child, seeking her
+pleasure as a child does, draining the cup of each new joy like a
+child; and he knew that he was no more to her than the agreeable
+companion of her pleasures. But such an association, such girlish
+friendship so freely given, must surely ripen into a warmer feeling.
+His pulses could not be so deeply stirred and hers give no responsive
+throb. There must be some sympathy, some answering emotion in a nature
+so intensely sensitive.
+
+Cheered by such hopeful reflections, Mr. Turchill ate an excellent
+breakfast, while Daphne somewhat timorously tried an egg, and was
+agreeably surprised to find it tasted pretty much the same as if the
+cook had fried it; a little leathery, perhaps, but that was a detail.
+
+‘I feel so relieved,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised if
+I had turned them into chickens. And now, if you have quite finished
+we’ll begin our rowing. I have a conviction that if I don’t learn to
+feather properly to-day I shall never accomplish it while I live.’
+
+The boat was ready for them, moored to a steep flight of steps which
+Bink had hewn out of the bank after his working hours. He had found
+odd planks in the wood-house, and had contrived to face the steps with
+timber in a most respectable manner, rewarded by Daphne by sweet words
+and sweeter looks, and by such a shower of shillings that he had opened
+a post-office savings-bank book on the strength of her bounty, and felt
+himself on the road to fortune.
+
+There was the boat in all the smartness of new varnished wood.
+Daphne had given up her idea of a Pompeian red dado to oblige the
+boat-builder. There were the oars and sculls, with Daphne’s monogram in
+dark blue and gold; and there, glittering in the sunlight, was the name
+she had chosen for her craft, in bright golden letters—Nero.
+
+‘What a queer name to choose!’ said Edgar. ‘He was such an out-and-out
+beast, you know.’
+
+‘Not a bit of it,’ retorted Daphne. ‘I read an article yesterday in
+an old volume of Cornhill, in which the writer demonstrates that he
+was rather a nice man. He didn’t poison Britannicus; he didn’t make
+away with his mamma; he didn’t set fire to Rome, though he did play
+the violin beautifully. He was a very accomplished young man, and the
+historians of his time were silly _gobe-mouches_, who jotted down
+every ridiculous scandal that was floating in society. I think that
+Taci——what’s his name ought to be ashamed of himself.’
+
+‘Oh, Nero has been set on his legs, has he?’ said Edgar carelessly,
+as he took the rudder lines, while Daphne bent over her sculls, and
+began—rather too vehemently—to feather. ‘And I suppose Tiberius was a
+very meritorious monarch, and all those scandals about Capri were so
+many airy fictions? Well, it doesn’t make much difference to us, does
+it?—except that it will go hard with me by-and-by, when my boys come to
+learn the history of the future, to have the young scamps tell me that
+all I learnt at Rugby was bosh.’
+
+‘At Rugby!’ cried Daphne, suddenly earnest. ‘You were at Rugby with my
+brother, weren’t you? Were you great friends?’
+
+Edgar leant over the boat, concerned about some weeds that were
+possibly interfering with the rudder.
+
+‘We didn’t see much of each other. He was ever so much younger than I,
+you know.’
+
+‘Was he nice? Were people fond of him?’
+
+‘Everybody was dreadfully sorry when he died of scarlet-fever, poor
+fellow!’ answered Edgar, without looking at her.
+
+‘Yes, it was terrible, was it not? I can just remember him. Such a
+bright, handsome boy; full of life and spirits. He used to tease me
+a good deal, but that is the nature of boys. And then, when I was at
+Brighton, there came a letter to say that he was dead, and I had to
+wear black frocks for ever so long. Poor Loftus! How dearly I should
+have loved him if he had lived!’
+
+‘Yes; it would have been nice for you to have a brother, would it not?’
+said Edgar, still with a shade of embarrassment.
+
+‘Nice! It would have been my salvation, to have someone of my own
+kindred, quite my brother. I love Madoline, with all my heart and
+soul; but she is only my half-sister. I always feel that there is a
+difference between us. She is my superior; she comes of a better stock.
+Nobody ever talks of my mother, or my mother’s family; but Lina’s
+parentage is in everybody’s mouth; she seems to be related—at least in
+heraldry—to everybody worth knowing in the county. But Loftus would
+have been the same clay that I am made of, don’t you know, neither
+better nor worse. Blood is thicker than water.’
+
+‘That’s a morbid feeling of yours, Daphne.’
+
+‘Is it? I’m afraid I have a few morbid feelings.’
+
+‘Get rid of them. There never was a better sister than Madoline is to
+you.’
+
+‘I know it. She is perfection; but that only makes her further away
+from me. I reverence her, I look up to her and admire her; but I can
+never feel on an equality with her.’
+
+‘That shows your good sense. It is an advantage for you to have someone
+to look up to.’
+
+‘Yes; but I should like someone on my own level as well.’
+
+‘You’ve got me,’ said Edgar bluntly. ‘Can’t you make a brother of me
+for the nonce?’
+
+‘For ever and always, if you like,’ replied Daphne. ‘I’m sure I’ve got
+the best of the bargain. I don’t believe any brother would get up at
+five o’clock to teach me to row.’
+
+Edgar felt very sure that Loftus would not have done it; that
+short-lived youth having been the very essence of selfishness, and
+debased by a marked inclination towards juvenile profligacy.
+
+‘Brothers are not the most self-sacrificing of human beings,’ he said.
+‘I think you’ll find finer instances of devotion in an Irish or a
+Scottish foster-brother than in the Saxon blood-relation. But Madoline
+is a sister in a thousand. Take care of that willow,’ as the boat shot
+under the drooping foliage of an ancient pollard. ‘How bright and happy
+she looked last night!’
+
+‘Yes; she had just received a long letter from Gerald, and he talks
+of coming home sooner than she expected him. He will give up his
+fishing in Norway, though I believe he had engaged an inland sea all to
+himself, and he will be home before the end of July. Isn’t it nice? I
+am dying with curiosity to see what he is like.’
+
+‘Didn’t I describe him to you?’
+
+‘In the vaguest way. You said I was sure to like him. Now I have an
+invincible conviction that I shall detest him; just because it is my
+duty to feel a sisterly affection for him.’
+
+‘Take care that you keep within the line of duty, and that your
+affection doesn’t go beyond the sisterly limit,’ said Edgar, with a
+grim smile. ‘There is no fear of the other thing.’
+
+‘What a savage look!’ cried Daphne laughingly. ‘How horridly jealous
+you must be of him!’
+
+‘Hasn’t he robbed me of my first love?’ demanded Edgar; ‘and now——’
+
+‘Don’t be so gloomy. Didn’t you tell me you had got over your
+disappointment, and that you meant to be a dear useful bachelor-uncle
+to Madoline’s children by-and-by?’
+
+‘I don’t know about being always a bachelor,’ said Edgar doubtfully.
+‘That would imply that I hadn’t got over my disappointment.’
+
+‘That is what you said the other day. I am only quoting yourself
+against yourself. I like to think of you as a perpetual bachelor
+for Lina’s sake. It is a more poetical idea than the notion of your
+consoling yourself with somebody else.’
+
+‘Yet a man does generally console himself. It is in human nature.’
+
+‘Don’t say another word,’ cried Daphne. ‘You are positively hateful
+this morning—so low and material. I’m afraid it must be the consequence
+of eggs and bacon, such a vulgar unæsthetic breakfast—Bink’s idea.
+I shall give you bread and butter and strawberries to-morrow, if
+MacCloskie will let me have any strawberries.’
+
+‘If you were to talk a little less and row a little more, I think we
+should get on faster,’ suggested Edgar, smiling at her.
+
+They had got into a spot where a little green peninsula jutted out into
+the stream, and where the current was almost a whirlpool. The boat had
+been travelling in a circle for the last five minutes, while Daphne
+plied her sculls, unconscious of the fact. They were nearing Stratford;
+the low level meadows lay round them, the tall spire rose yonder, above
+the many-arched Gothic bridge built by good Sir Hugh Clopton before
+Shakespeare was born. William Shakespeare must have crossed it many and
+many a time, with the light foot of boyhood; a joyous spirit, finding
+ineffable delight in simplest things. And, again, after he had lived
+his life and had measured himself amidst the greatest minds of his
+age, in the greatest city of the world, and had toiled, and conquered
+independence and fame, and came back rich enough to buy the great house
+hard by the grammar-school, how often must he have lounged against the
+gray stone parapet, in the calm eventide, watching the light linger and
+fade upon the reedy river, bats and swallows skimming across the water,
+the grand old Gothic church embowered in trees, and the level meadows
+beyond!
+
+They were in the very heart of Shakespeare’s country. Yonder, far away
+to their right, lay the meadow-path by which he walked to Shottery.
+Memories of him were interwoven with every feature in the landscape.
+
+‘My father told me I was not to go beyond our own meadows,’ said
+Daphne, ‘but of course he meant when I was alone. It is quite different
+when you are with me.’
+
+‘Naturally. I think I am capable of taking care of you.’
+
+This kind of thing went on for another week of weather which at worst
+was showery. They breakfasted in the boat-house every morning, Daphne
+exercising all her ingenuity in the arrangement of the meal, and making
+rapid strides in the art of cookery.
+
+It must be confessed that Mr. Turchill seemed to enjoy the breakfasts
+suggested by the vulgar-minded Bink, rather more than those which were
+direct emanations of Daphne’s delicate fancy. He liked broiled mackerel
+better than cream and raspberry jam. He preferred devilled kidneys to
+honeycomb and milk-rolls. But whatever Daphne set before him he ate
+with thankfulness. It was so sweet to spend his mornings in this bright
+joyous company. It was a grand thing to have so intelligent a pupil,
+for Daphne was becoming very skilful in the management of her boat. She
+was able to navigate her bark safely through the most difficult bits of
+the deep swift river. She could shoot the narrow arches of Stratford
+bridge in as good style as a professional waterman.
+
+But when two young pure-minded people are enjoying themselves in this
+frank, easy-going fashion, there is generally some one of mature age
+near at hand to suggest evil, and to put a stop to their enjoyment.
+So it was in this case. The Rector’s wife heard of her niece’s watery
+meanderings and gipsy breakfasts, and took upon herself to interfere.
+Mr. MacCloskie, who had reluctantly furnished a dish of forced
+strawberries for the boat-house breakfast, happened to stroll over to
+Arden Rectory in the afternoon with a basket of the same fruit, as an
+offering from himself to Mrs. Ferrers—an inevitable half-crown tip
+to the head gardener, and dear at the price in the lady’s opinion.
+Naturally a man of MacCloskie’s consequence required refreshment after
+his walk; so Mrs. Todd entertained him in her snug little sanctum next
+the pantry, with a dish of strong tea and a crusty knob of home-baked
+bread, lavishly buttered. Whereupon, in the course of conversation, Mr.
+MacCloskie let fall that Miss Daphne was carrying on finely with Mr.
+Turchill, of Hawksyard, and that he supposed that would be a match some
+of these days. Pressed for details, he described the early breakfasts
+at the boat-house, the long mornings spent on the river, the afternoons
+at billiards, the tea-drinkings in the conservatory. All this Todd, who
+was an irrepressible gossip, retailed to her mistress next morning,
+when the bill of fare had been written, and the campaign of gluttony
+for the next twenty-four hours had been carefully mapped out.
+
+Mrs. Ferrers heard with the air of profound indifference which she
+always assumed on such occasions.
+
+‘MacCloskie is an incorrigible gossip,’ she said, ‘and you are almost
+as bad.’
+
+But, directly she had dismissed Todd, the fair Rhoda went up to
+her dressing-room and arrayed herself for a rural walk. Life in
+a pastoral district, with a husband of few ideas, will now and
+then wax monotonous, and Rhoda was glad to have some little mental
+excitement—something which made it necessary for her to bestir herself,
+and which enabled her to be useful, after her manner, to her kith and
+kin.
+
+‘I shall not speak to her father, yet,’ she said to herself. ‘He has
+strict ideas of propriety, and might be too severe. Madoline must
+remonstrate with her.’
+
+She walked across the smiling fields, light of foot, buoyed up by the
+pleasing idea that she was performing a Christian duty, that her errand
+was in all things befitting her double position as near relation and
+pastor’s wife. She felt that if Fate had made her a man she would
+have been an excellent bishop. All the sterner duties of that high
+calling—visitations, remonstrances, suspensions—would have come easy to
+her.
+
+She found Madoline in the morning-room, the French windows wide open,
+the balcony full of flowers, the tables and mantelpiece and cabinets
+all abloom with roses.
+
+‘Sorry to interrupt your morning practice, dearest,’ said Mrs. Ferrers
+as Madoline rose from the piano. ‘You play those sweet classic bits so
+deliciously. Mendelssohn, is it not?’
+
+‘No; Raff. How early you are, Aunt Rhoda!’
+
+‘I have something very particular to say to you, Lina, so I came
+directly I had done with Todd.’
+
+This kind of address from a woman of Rhoda’s type generally forbodes
+unpleasantness. Madoline looked alarmed.
+
+‘There’s nothing wrong, I hope,’ she faltered.
+
+‘Not absolutely—not intentionally wrong, I trust,’ said Mrs. Ferrers.
+‘But it must be put a stop to immediately.’
+
+Madoline turned pale. In the days that were gone Aunt Rhoda had
+always been a dreadful nuisance to the servants. She had been
+perpetually making unpleasant discoveries—peculations, dissipations,
+and carryings-on of divers kinds. Not unfrequently she had stumbled
+upon mares’-nests, and after making everybody uncomfortable for a
+week or two, had been constrained to confess herself mistaken. Her
+rule at South Hill had not been peace. And now Lina feared that, even
+outside the house, Aunt Rhoda had contrived to make one of her terrible
+discoveries. Someone had been giving away the milk or selling the corn,
+or stealing garden-stuff.
+
+‘What is it, Aunt Rhoda?’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers did not give a direct answer. Her cold gray eyes made the
+circuit of the room, and then she asked:
+
+‘Where is Daphne?’
+
+‘In her own room—lying down, I think, tired out with rowing.’
+
+‘And where is Mr. Turchill?’
+
+‘Gone home. He had some important business, I believe—a horse to look
+at.’
+
+‘Oh, he does go home sometimes?’
+
+‘How curiously you talk, Aunt Rhoda. Is there any harm in his coming
+here as often as he likes? He is our oldest friend. Papa treats him
+like a son.’
+
+‘Oh, no harm, of course, if Vernon is satisfied. But I don’t wonder
+Daphne is tired, and is lying down at mid-day—a horribly lazy,
+unladylike habit, by the way. Are you aware that she is down at the
+boat-house before seven every morning?’
+
+‘Certainly, aunt. It is much nicer for her to row at that early hour
+than later in the day. Edgar is teaching her; she is quite safe in his
+care.’
+
+‘And do you know that there is a gipsy breakfast every morning in the
+boat-house?’
+
+‘I have heard something about a tea-kettle, and ham and eggs. Daphne
+has an idea that she is learning to cook.’
+
+‘And do you approve of all this?’
+
+Madoline smiled at the question. ‘I like her to be happy. I think she
+wastes a good deal of time; that she is doing nothing to carry on her
+education; but idleness is only natural in a girl of her age, and she
+has been at home such a short time, and she is so fond of the river.’
+
+‘Has it never occurred to you, Madoline, that there is some impropriety
+in these _tête-à-tête_ mornings with Edgar Turchill?’
+
+‘Impropriety! Impropriety in Daphne being on friendly terms with
+Edgar—Edgar, who has been brought up with us almost as a brother!’
+
+‘With you, perhaps; not with Daphne. She has spent most of her life
+away from South Hill. She is little more than a stranger to Mr.
+Turchill.’
+
+‘She would be very much surprised if you were to tell her so, and so
+would Edgar. Why, he used always to make himself her playfellow in her
+holidays, before she went to Madame Tolmache.’
+
+‘That was all very well while she was in short frocks. But she is now a
+woman, and people will talk about her.’
+
+‘About Daphne, my innocent childlike sister, little more than a child
+in years, quite a child in gaiety and light-heartedness! How can
+such an idea enter your head, Aunt Rhoda? Surely the most hardened
+scandalmonger could not find anything to say against Daphne.’
+
+‘My dear Madoline,’ began Mrs. Ferrers severely, ‘you are usually so
+sensible in all you do and say that I really wonder at the way you are
+talking this morning. There are certain rules of conduct, established
+time out of mind, for well-bred young women; and Daphne can no more
+violate those rules with impunity than anybody else can. It is not
+because she wears her hair down her back and her petticoats immodestly
+scanty that she is to go scot-free,’ added Aunt Rhoda in a little
+involuntary burst of malevolence.
+
+She had not been fond of Daphne as a child; she liked her much less as
+a young woman. To a well-preserved woman of forty, who still affects
+to be young, there is apt to be something aggravating in the wild
+freshness and unconscious insolence of lovely seventeen.
+
+‘Aunt Rhoda, I think you forget that Daphne is my sister—my very dear
+sister.’
+
+‘Your half-sister, Madoline. I forget nothing. It is you who forget
+that there are reasons in Daphne’s antecedents why we should be most
+especially careful about her.’
+
+‘It is unkind of you to speak of that, aunt,’ protested Madoline,
+blushing. ‘As to Edgar Turchill, he is my father’s favourite companion;
+he is devoted to all of us. There can be no possible harm in his being
+a kind of adopted brother to Daphne.’
+
+‘He was an adopted brother to you three years ago, and we all know what
+came of it.’
+
+‘Pshaw! That was a foolish fancy, and is all over and done with.’
+
+‘The same thing may happen in Daphne’s case.’
+
+‘If it should, would you be sorry? I am sure I should not. I know my
+father would approve.’
+
+‘Oh, if Vernon is satisfied with the state of affairs, I can have
+nothing further to say,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers with dignity; ‘but if
+Daphne were my daughter—and Heaven forbid I should ever have such a
+responsibility as an overgrown girl of that temperament!—I would allow
+no boat-house breakfastings, no meanderings on the Avon. However, it
+is no business of mine,’ concluded Mrs. Ferrers with an injured air,
+having said all she had to say. ‘How is your water-lily counterpane
+getting on?’
+
+‘Nearly finished,’ answered Madoline, delighted to change the
+conversation. ‘It will be ready for papa’s birthday.’
+
+‘How is my brother, by-the-by?’
+
+‘He has been complaining of rheumatic pains. I’m afraid we shall have
+to spend next winter abroad.’
+
+‘What nonsense, Lina! It is mere hypochondria on Vernon’s part. He was
+always full of fancies. He is as well as I am.’
+
+‘He does not think so himself, aunt; and he ought to know best.’
+
+‘I am not sure of that. A hypochondriac may fancy he has hydrophobia,
+but he is not obliged to be right. You foster Vernon’s imaginary
+complaints by pretending to believe in them.’
+
+Lina did not argue the point, perceiving very plainly that her aunt
+was out of temper. Nor did she press that lady to stay to luncheon,
+nor offer any polite impediment to her departure. But the interference
+of starched propriety had the usual effect. Lightly as Madoline had
+seemed to hold her aunt’s advice, she was too thorough a woman not
+to act upon it. She went up to Daphne’s room directly Mrs. Ferrers
+left the house. She stole softly in, so as not to disturb the girl’s
+slumber, and seated herself by the open window calmly to await her
+waking. Daphne’s room was one of the prettiest in the house. It had a
+wide window, overlooking the pastoral valley and winding Avon. It was
+neatly furnished with birchwood, and turquoise cretonne, and white
+and gold crockery, but it was sorely out of order. Daphne’s gowns of
+yesterday and the day before were flung on the sofa. Daphne’s hats of
+all the week round were strewed on tables and chairs. Her sunshade
+lay across the dressing-table among the brushes, and scent bottles,
+and flower-glasses, and pincushions, and trumpery. She had no maid of
+her own, and her sister’s maid, in whose articles of service it was
+to attend upon her, had renounced that duty as a task impossible of
+performance. No well-drilled maid could have anything to do—except
+when positively obliged—with such an untidy and unpunctual young
+lady. A young lady who would appoint to have her hair dressed and
+her gown laced at seven, and come running into the house breathless
+and panting at twenty minutes to eight; a young lady who made hay of
+her cuffs and collars whenever she was in a hurry, and whose drawer
+of ribbons was always being upheaved as if by an earthquake. Daphne,
+being remonstrated with and complained of, protested that she would
+infinitely rather wait upon herself than be worried.
+
+‘You are all goodness, Lina dear, but half a maid is no maid. I would
+rather do without one altogether,’ she said.
+
+The room was not absolutely ugly, even in its disorder. All the things
+that were scattered about were pretty things. There were a good
+many ornaments, such as are apt to be accumulated by young ladies
+with plenty of pocket-money, and very little common sense. Mock
+Venetian-glass flower-vases of every shape and colour; Japanese cups
+and saucers, and fans and screens; Swiss brackets; willow-pattern
+plates; a jumble of everything trumpery and fashionable; flowers
+everywhere, and the atmosphere sickly sweet with the odour of tuberose.
+
+Daphne stirred in her sleep, faintly conscious of a new presence in the
+room, sighed, turned on her pillow, and presently sat up, flushed and
+towzled, in her indigo gown, just as she had come in from her boating
+excursion.
+
+‘Have you had a nice nap, dear?’
+
+‘Lovely. I was awfully tired. We rowed to Stratford Weir.’
+
+‘And you are quite able to row now?’
+
+‘Edgar says I scull as well as he does.’
+
+‘Then, dearest, I think you ought to dispense with Edgar in future and
+keep to our own meadows, as papa said he wished you to do.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Daphne. ‘Is that a message from my father?’
+
+‘No, dear. But I am sure it will be better for you to consider his
+wishes upon this point. He is very particular about being obeyed.’
+
+‘Oh! very well, Lina. Of course if you wish it I will tell Edgar the
+course of lessons is concluded. He has been awfully good. It will be
+rather slow without him. But I was beginning to find the breakfasts
+a weight on my mind. It was so difficult to maintain variety—and
+Bink has such low ideas. Do you know that he actually suggested
+sausages—pork-sausages in June! And I could not make him comprehend the
+nauseousness of the notion.’
+
+‘Then it is understood, darling, that you row by yourself in future. I
+know my father would prefer it.’
+
+‘You prefer it, Lina; that is enough for me,’ answered Daphne in her
+coaxing way. ‘But I think I ought to give Edgar some little present
+for all his goodness to me. A smoking-cap, or a cigar-case, or an
+antimacassar for his mother. I could work it in crewels, don’t you
+know.’
+
+‘You never finish anything, Daphne.’
+
+‘Because the beginning is always so much nicer. But if I should break
+down in this, you would finish it, wouldn’t you, Lina?’
+
+‘With pleasure, my pet.’
+
+Edgar was told that evening that his services as a teacher of rowing
+would no longer be required. And though the fact was imparted to him
+with infinite sweetness, he felt as if half the sunshine was taken out
+of his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+‘GOD WOTE THAT WORLDLY JOY IS SONE AGO.’
+
+
+Perfect mistress of her boat, Daphne revelled in the lonely delight of
+the river. She felt no grief at the loss of Mr. Turchill’s company.
+He had been very kind to her, he had been altogether devoted and
+unselfish, and the gipsy breakfasts in the old boat-house had been
+capital fun. But these delights would have palled in time; while the
+languid pleasure of drifting quietly down the stream, thinking her
+own thoughts, dreaming her own dreams, could never know satiety. She
+was so full of thoughts, sweet thoughts, vague fancies, visions of an
+impossible future, dreams which made up half her life. What did it
+matter that this airy fantastic castle she had built for herself was
+no earthly edifice, that she could never live in it, or be any nearer
+it than she was to-day? To her the thing existed, were it only in
+dreamland; it was a part of herself and of her life, it was of more
+consequence to her than the commonplace routine of daily existence—the
+dressing, and dining, and driving, and visiting.
+
+Had her life been more varied, full of duty, or even diversified by the
+frivolous activity of pleasure, she could not have thus given herself
+up to dreaming. But she had few pleasures and no duties. Madoline held
+her absolved from every care and every trouble on the ground of her
+youth. She did not like parish work of any kind; she hated the idea of
+visiting the poor; so Madoline held her excused from that duty, as from
+all others. Her mind would awaken to the serious side of life when she
+was older, her sister thought. She seemed now to belong to the flowers
+and butterflies, and the fair ephemeral things of the garden.
+
+Thus Daphne, ignored by her father, indulged by her sister, enjoyed
+a freedom which is rarely accorded to a girl of seventeen. Her Aunt
+Rhoda looked on and disapproved, and hoped piously that she would come
+to no harm, and was surprised at Lina’s weakness, and thought Daphne’s
+bright little boat a blot upon the landscape when it came gliding
+down the river below the Rectory windows. The parson’s rich glebe was
+conterminous with Sir Vernon Lawford’s property, and Daphne hardly knew
+where her father’s fields ended or where the church fields began.
+
+Edgar Turchill, degraded from his post of instructor, still contrived
+to spend a considerable portion of his life at South Hill. If he was
+not there for lawn-tennis in the afternoon, with the Rector’s wife for
+a fourth, he was there in the evening for billiards. He fetched and
+carried for Madoline, rode over to Warwick to get her a new book, or
+to Leamington to match a skein of crewel. There was no commission too
+petty for him, no office too trivial or lowly, so that he might be
+permitted to spend his time with the sisters.
+
+Daphne thought this devotedness a bad sign, and began to fear that the
+canker was at his heart, and that he would die for love of Madoline
+when the fortunate Gerald came home to claim her.
+
+‘You poor creature,’ she said to him one day, ‘you foolish moth, why
+flutter round the flame that must destroy you? I declare you are
+getting worse every day.’
+
+‘You are wrong,’ said Edgar; ‘I believe I am getting cured.’
+
+What did Daphne dream about in those languid summer mornings, as her
+boat moved slowly down the stream in the cool shadow of the willows,
+with only a gentle dip of the sculls now and then to keep her straight?
+Her thoughts were all of the past, her fancies were all of the future.
+Her thoughts were of the nameless stranger who went across the Jura
+last year—one little year ago—almost at this season. Her dreams were of
+meeting him again. Yet the chances against such a meeting reduced it
+almost to an impossibility.
+
+‘The world is so horribly large,’ she reflected sadly, ‘and I told him
+such atrocious stories. It will be a just punishment if I never see him
+any more. Yet how am I to live through my life without ever looking on
+his face again!’
+
+It had gone so far as this: it seemed to her almost an absolute need of
+her soul that they two should meet, and know more of each other.
+
+The ardent sensive nature had been thus deeply impressed by the first
+bright and picturesque image presented to the girlish fancy. It was
+something more than love at first sight. It was the awakening of a
+fresh young mind to the passion of love. She had changed from a child
+to a woman, in the hour when she met the unknown in the forest.
+
+‘Who is he, what is he? where shall I find him?’ she asked herself. ‘He
+is the only man I can ever love. He is the only man I will ever marry.
+All other men are low and commonplace beside him.’
+
+The river was the confidant and companion of all her dreams—the sweet
+lonely river, flowing serenely between green pastures, where the cattle
+stood in tranquil idleness, pastern deep in purple clover. She had no
+other ear into which to whisper her secret. She had tried, ever so many
+times, to tell Madoline, and had failed. Lina was so sensible, and
+would be deeply shocked at such folly. How could she tell Lina—whose
+wooing had been conducted in the most conventionally correct manner,
+with everybody’s consent and approval—that she had flung her heart
+under the feet of a nameless stranger, of whom the only one fact she
+knew was that he was engaged to be married?
+
+So she kept this one foolish secret locked in her own breast. The
+passion was not deep enough to make her miserable, or to spoil the
+unsophisticated joys of her life. Perhaps it was rather fancy than
+passion. It was fed and fostered by all her dreams. But her life was
+in no wise unhappy because this love lacked more substantial food
+than dreaming. God had given her that intense delight in Nature, that
+love of His beautiful earth, for which Faustus thanked his creator.
+Field, streamlet, wood, and garden, were sources of inexhaustible
+pleasure. She loved animals of all kinds. The gray Jersey cows in
+the marshy water-meadows; the house dogs, and yard dogs, and stable
+terriers—supposed to be tremendous at rats, yet never causing any
+perceptible diminution of that prolific race; the big white horses at
+the farm, with their coarse plebeian tails tied up into tight knots,
+their manes elaborately plaited, and their harness bedizened with much
+brazen ornamentation; Madoline’s exquisite pair of dark chestnuts,
+thoroughbred to the tips of their delicate ears; Sir Vernon’s massive
+roadster; Boiler and Crock, the old carriage-horses—Daphne had an
+affection for them all. They were living things, with soft friendly
+eyes, more unvaryingly kind than human eyes, and they all seemed to
+love her. She was more at her ease with them than in the dimly-lighted,
+flower-scented drawing-room, where Sir Vernon always seemed to look at
+her as if he wished her away, and where her aunt worried her about her
+want of deportment.
+
+With Lina she was always happy. Lina’s love and gentleness never varied.
+
+Daphne came home after a morning wasted on the river, to sit at her
+sister’s feet while she worked, or to lie on the sofa while Lina read
+to her, glad to get in the thin edge of the educational wedge in the
+form of an interesting article from one of the Quarterlies, or a few
+pages of good poetry. Daphne was a fervent lover of verse, so that it
+came within the limits of her comprehension. Her tastes were catholic;
+she worshipped Shakespeare; she adored Byron and Shelley and Tennyson,
+Mrs. Browning, and the simpler poems of Robert Browning; and she had
+heard vaguely of verses written by a poet called Swinburne; but this
+was all she had been permitted to learn of the latest development of
+the lyric muse. Byron and Tennyson, it is needless to say, were her
+especial favourites.
+
+‘One makes me feel wicked, and the other makes me feel good; but I
+adore them both,’ she said.
+
+‘I don’t see what you can find in Childe Harold to make you wicked,’
+argued Madoline, who had the old-fashioned idea, hereditary of course,
+that Byron was the poet of the century.
+
+‘Oh, I can hardly tell you; but there is a something, a sense of
+shortcoming in the world generally, an idea that life is not worth
+living, that amidst all that is most beautiful and sacred and solemn
+and interesting upon earth, one might just as well be dead; one would
+be better off than walking about a world in which virtue was never
+rightly rewarded, truth and honour and courage or lofty thoughts never
+fairly understood—where everything is at sixes and sevens, in short.
+I know I express myself horribly, but the feeling is difficult to
+explain.’
+
+‘I think what you mean is that Byron, even at his loftiest and best,
+wrote like a misanthrope.’
+
+‘I suppose that’s it. Now, Tennyson, though his poetry never lifts
+me to the skies, makes me feel that earth is a good place and heaven
+better; that high thoughts and noble deeds bear their fruit somehow,
+and somewhere; that it is better to suffer a good deal, and sacrifice
+one’s dearest desires in the cause of duty and right, than to snatch
+some brief joys out of life, and perish like the insects that are born
+and die in a day.’
+
+‘I am so glad you can enjoy good poetry, dear,’ said Madoline,
+delighted at any surcease of frivolity in her young sister.
+
+‘Enjoy it! I revel in it; it is my delight. Pray don’t suppose that I
+dislike books, Lina. Only keep away from me grammars, and geographies,
+and biographies of learned men, and voyages to the North Pole—there is
+a South Pole, too, isn’t there, dear? though nobody even seems to worry
+about it—and you may read me as many books as you like.’
+
+‘How condescending of you, little one!’ said Madoline, smiling at the
+bright young face looking up from the sofa-pillow, on which Daphne’s
+golden head reclined in luxurious restfulness. ‘Well, I will read to
+you with pleasure. It will be my delight to help to carry on your
+education; for though girls learn an immense number of things at
+school they don’t seem to know much when they come away. We will read
+together for a couple of hours a day if you like, dear.’
+
+‘Till Gerald comes home,’ retorted Daphne; ‘he will not let you give me
+two hours of your life every day. He will want you all to himself.’
+
+‘He can join our studies; he is a great reader.’
+
+‘Expose my ignorance to a future brother-in-law? Not for worlds!’ cried
+Daphne. ‘Let us talk about him, Lina. Aren’t you delighted to think he
+is coming home?’
+
+‘Yes; I am very glad.’
+
+‘How do my father and Gerald get on together?’
+
+‘Not too well, I am sorry to say. Papa is fonder of Edgar than of
+Gerald, you know how prejudiced he is about race and high birth. I
+don’t think he has ever quite forgiven Gerald his father’s trade.’
+
+‘But there is Lady Geraldine to fall back upon. Surely she makes
+amends.’
+
+‘Hardly, according to papa’s ideas. You see the Earldom of Heronville
+is only a creation of Charles the Second’s reign, and his peerages
+are not always respectable. I believe there were scandals about the
+first countess. Her portrait by Sir Peter Lely hangs in the refectory
+at Goring Abbey. She was a very lovely woman, and Lady Geraldine was
+rather proud of being thought like her.’
+
+‘Although she was not respectable,’ said Daphne. ‘And was there really
+a likeness?’
+
+‘Yes; and a marked one. I can see it even in Gerald, who is the image
+of his mother—the same dreamy eyes, the same thoughtful mouth. But you
+will be able to judge for yourself when Gerald comes home, for I have
+no doubt we shall be going over to the Abbey.’
+
+‘The Abbey! It is a very old place, I suppose?’
+
+‘No; it was built by Mr. Goring.’
+
+‘Why Abbey? Surely that means an old place that was once inhabited by
+monks.’
+
+‘It was Mr. Goring’s fancy. He insisted upon calling his house an
+abbey. It was foolish, of course; but, though he was a very good man,
+I believe he had a slight leaven of obstinacy in his disposition, and
+when once he had made up his mind about anything he was not to be
+turned from his purpose.’
+
+‘Perverse old creature! And is the Abbey nice?’
+
+‘It is as grand and as beautiful a place as money could make it. There
+are cloisters copied from those at Muckross, and the dining-room has
+a Gothic roof, and is called a refectory. The situation is positively
+lovely: a richly timbered valley, sheltered by green hills.’
+
+‘And you are to be mistress of this magnificent place. Oh, Lina,
+what shall I do when you are married, and I am left alone here
+_tête-à-tête_ with papa? How shall I support my life?’
+
+‘Dearest, by that time you will have learned to understand your father,
+and you will be quite at your ease with him.’
+
+‘I think not. I am afraid he is one of those mysteries which I shall
+never fathom.’
+
+‘My love, that is such a foolish notion. Besides, in a year or
+two my Daphne may have a husband and a house of her own—perhaps a
+more interesting place then Goring Abbey,’ added Lina, thinking of
+Hawksyard, which seemed to her Daphne’s natural destination.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+June ripened, and bloomed, and grew daily more beautiful. It was
+peerless weather, with just such blue skies and sunny noontides as
+there had been at Fontainebleau last year, but without the baking heat
+and the breathless atmosphere. Here there were cool winds to lift the
+rippling hair from Daphne’s brow, and cool grass under her feet. She
+revelled in the summer beauty of the earth; she spent almost all her
+life out of doors, on the river, in the woods, in the garden. If she
+studied, it was under the spreading boughs of the low Spanish chestnut
+which made a tent of greenery on the lawn. Sometimes she carried her
+drawing-book to some point of vantage on a neighbouring hill, and
+sketched the outline of a wide range of landscape, and washed in a
+sky, and began a tree in the foreground, and left off in disgust. She
+never finished anything. Her portfolio was full of beginnings, not
+altogether devoid of talent: mouse-coloured cows, deep-red oxen, every
+kind of tree and rock and old English cottage, or rick-yard, or gray
+stone village church; but nothing finished—the stamp of an impetuous,
+impatient temper upon all.
+
+There had been no definite announcement as to Gerald’s return. He was
+in Sweden, seeing wonderful falls and grottoes, which he described
+in his letters to Madoline, and he was coming back soon, perhaps
+before the end of July. He had told the Abbey servants to be prepared
+for him at any time. This indefiniteness kept Madoline’s mind in a
+somewhat perturbed state; yet she had to be outwardly calm, and full
+of thoughtfulness for her father, who required constant attention. His
+love for his elder daughter was the one redeeming grace of a selfish
+nature. It was a selfish love, for he would have willingly let her
+waste her life in maiden solitude for the sake of keeping her by his
+side; but it was love, and this was something in a man of so stern and
+unyielding a temper.
+
+He liked her to be always near him, always within call, his companion
+abroad, his counsellor at home. He consulted her about all the details
+of his estate and her own, rarely wrote a business letter without
+reading it to her. She was wanted in his study continually. When he
+was tired after a morning’s business, she read the newspapers to him,
+or a heavy political article in Blackwood or one of the Quarterlies,
+were he inclined to hear it. She never shirked a duty, or considered
+her own pleasure. She had educated herself to be her father’s
+companion, and counted it a privilege to minister to him.
+
+‘Faultless daughter, perfect wife,’ said Sir Vernon, clasping her hand
+as she sat beside his sofa; ‘Goring is a lucky fellow to get such a
+prize.’
+
+‘Why should he not have a good wife, dear father? He is good himself.
+Remember what a good son he was.’
+
+‘To his mother, admirable. I doubt if he and old Goring hit it quite so
+well. I wish he came of a better stock.’
+
+‘That is a prejudice of yours, father.’
+
+‘It is a prejudice that I have rarely seen belied by experience. I
+wish you had chosen Edgar. There is a fine fellow for you, a lineal
+descendant of that Turchill who was sheriff of Warwickshire in the
+reign of the Confessor. Shakespeare’s mother could trace her descent
+from the same stock. So you see that Edgar can claim alliance with the
+greatest poet of all time.’
+
+‘I should never have thought it,’ said Madoline laughingly; ‘his
+lineage doesn’t show itself in his conversation. I like him very much,
+you know, papa; indeed, I may say I love him, but it is in a thoroughly
+sisterly fashion. By-the-by, papa, don’t you think he might make an
+excellent husband for Daphne?’ she faltered, with downcast eyes, as she
+went on with her crewel-work.
+
+‘She would be an uncommonly fortunate girl if she got him,’ retorted
+Sir Vernon, with a clouding countenance; ‘he is too good for her.’
+
+‘Oh, father! can you speak like that of your own daughter?’
+remonstrated Lina.
+
+‘Is a man to shut his eyes to a girl’s character because she happens
+to bear his name?’ asked Sir Vernon impatiently. ‘Daphne is a lump of
+self-indulgent frivolity.’
+
+‘Indeed you are mistaken,’ cried Lina; ‘she is very sweet-tempered and
+loving.’
+
+‘Sweet-tempered! Yes; I know the kind of thing. Winning words,
+pretty looks, trivial fascinations; a creature whose movements you
+watch—fascinated by her variety—as you watch a bird in a cage.
+Graceful, beautiful, false, worthless! I have some experience of the
+type.’
+
+‘Father, this is the most cruel prejudice. What can Daphne have ever
+done to offend you?’
+
+‘Done! Is she not her mother’s daughter? Don’t argue with me about her,
+Lina. She is here beside my hearth, and I must make the best of her.
+God grant she may come to no harm; but I am full of fear when I think
+of her future.’
+
+‘Then you would be glad if Edgar were to propose for her, and she were
+to accept him?’
+
+‘Certainly. It would be the very best thing that could happen to her. I
+should only feel sorry for him. But I don’t think a man who once loved
+you would ever content himself with Daphne.’
+
+‘He is very attentive to her.’
+
+‘_Che sara, sara!_’ murmured Sir Vernon languidly.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Midsummer-day—the hottest, brightest day there had been yet,
+and Daphne had given herself up to unmixed enjoyment of the warmth and
+light and cloudless blue sky. Sir Vernon and Madoline had a luncheon
+engagement at a house beyond Stoneleigh, a drive of eleven miles each
+way, so dinner had been postponed from eight to half-past, and Daphne
+had the livelong day to herself; free to follow her own devices, free
+even from the company of her devoted slave Edgar, who would have hung
+upon her like a burr had he been at home, but who was spending a few
+days in London with his mother, escorting that somewhat homely matron
+to picture-galleries, garden-parties, and theatres, and trying to rub
+off a year’s rural rust by a week’s metropolitan friction.
+
+Edgar was away; the light park-phaeton with the chestnuts had driven
+off at half-past eleven, Madoline looking lovely in a Madras muslin
+gown and a bonnet made of roses, her father content to loll in the low
+seat by her side while she managed the somewhat vivacious cobs. Daphne
+watched the carriage till it vanished at a curve of the narrow wooded
+drive, and then ran back to the house to plan her own campaign.
+
+‘I will have a picnic,’ she said to herself, ‘a solitary, selfish,
+Robinson Crusoe-like picnic. I will have nobody but Tennyson and Lina’s
+collie to keep me company. Goldie and I will go trespassing, and find a
+sly secret corner in Charlecote Park where we can eat our luncheon. I
+believe it is against the law to stray from the miserable footpath; but
+who cares for law on Midsummer-day? I shall feel myself almost as brave
+as Shakespeare when he went poaching; and thank goodness there is no
+Justice Shallow to call me to order.’
+
+She ran to her own room for a basket, a picturesque beehive basket, the
+very one she had carried—and he had carried—at Fontainebleau. What a
+foolish impulse it must have been which made her touch the senseless
+straw with her lips, remembering whose hand had held it! Then to the
+housekeeper’s room to forage for provisions. The wing of a chicken:
+a thick wedge of pound-cake; a punnet of strawberries; a bottle of
+lemonade; a couple of milk-rolls. Mrs. Spicer would have packed these
+things neatly in white paper, but Daphne bundled them into the basket
+anyhow.
+
+‘Don’t trouble, you dear good soul; they are only for Goldie and me,’
+she said.
+
+‘You may just as well have things nice, miss. There, you’d have forgot
+the salt if I wasn’t here. And if you’re going to take that there
+obstreperous collie you’ll want something more substantial.’
+
+‘Give me a slice of beef for him then, and a couple more of your
+delicious rolls,’ asked Daphne coaxingly. ‘My Goldie mustn’t be
+starved. And be quick, like a love, for I’m in an awful hurry.’
+
+‘Lor, miss, when you’ve got all the day before you! You’ll be fearful
+lonesome.’
+
+‘What, with Goldie and the “Idylls of the King!”’ exclaimed Daphne,
+glancing downwards at her little green cloth volume.
+
+‘Ah, well; I know when young ladies have got a nice novel to read they
+never feel lonesome,’ said Mrs. Spicer, filling every available corner
+of the basket, with which Daphne stepped off gaily to summon Goldie.
+
+Goldie was a bright yellow collie, intensely vivacious, sharp-nosed,
+brown-eyed; a dog that knew not what it was to be quiet; a dog you
+might lose at the other end of the county, confident that he would
+scamper home across wood and hill and valley as straight as the crow’s
+flight. He spent half his life tied up in the stable-yard, and the
+other half rushing about the country with Daphne. He travelled an
+incalculable number of miles in the course of an ordinary walk, and was
+given to racing cattle. He worshipped Daphne, and held her in some awe
+on this cattle question; would leap into the air with mad delight when
+she was kind to him, or grovel at her feet when she was angry.
+
+‘Now, Goldie dear, if you and I are to lunch in Charlecote Park, I
+must take a strap for you,’ said Daphne, as they started from the
+stable-yard, Goldie proclaiming his rapture by clamorous barking.
+‘It will never do for you to go racing the Lucy deer, or even the
+Lucy oxen. We should get into worse trouble than Shakespeare did, for
+Shakespeare had not such a frigid father as mine. I daresay old John,
+the glover, was an easy-going indulgent soul whom his son could treat
+anyhow.’
+
+It was only a walk of two miles across the fields to Charlecote; two
+miles by meadows that are as lovely and as richly timbered as they
+could have been in Shakespeare’s time. High farming is not yet the rule
+in Warwickshire. Hedges grow high and wild; broad oaks spread their
+kingly branches above the rich rank grass; dock and mallow, foxglove,
+fern, and dog-rose thrive and bloom beside every ditch; and many a
+fair stretch of grass by the roadside—a no man’s land of pleasant
+pasture—offers space for the hawker’s van, or the children’s noonday
+sports, or the repose of the tired tramp, lying face downwards in a
+rapture of rest, while the skylark trills in the distant blue above
+him, and the rustle of summer leaves soothes his slumber.
+
+It is a lovely country, lovely in its simple, pastoral, English beauty,
+calm and fitting cradle for a great mind.
+
+After the fields came a lane, a green arcade with a leafy roof, through
+which the sun-rays crept in quivering lines of light, and then the gate
+that opened on the footpath across Charlecote Park. Yonder showed the
+gray walls of the house, venerable on one side, modern on the other,
+and the stone single-arched bridge, and the lake, narrowing to a dull
+sluggish-looking stream that seemed to flow nowhere in particular. The
+tallest and stoutest of the elms looked too young for Shakespeare’s
+time. But here and there appeared the ruin of a tree, hollow of trunk,
+gaunt of limb, whose green branches may once have sheltered the deer he
+stole.
+
+The place was very lonely. There was nobody to interfere with Daphne’s
+pleasure, or even to object to the collie, who crept meekly to her
+side, held by a strap, and casting longing looks at the distant oxen.
+She wandered about in the loneliest bits of the park, supremely
+indifferent to rules and regulations as to where she might go and where
+she might not; till she finally deposited her basket and sunshade under
+a stalwart oak, and sat down at the foot thereof, with Goldie still
+strapped, and constrained to virtue. She fastened one end of the strap
+to the lowest branch of the tree, Goldie standing on end licking her
+hands all the time.
+
+‘Now, dear, you are as comfortable as in your own stable-yard. You can
+admire the cows and sheep in the distance, standing about so peacefully
+in the sunshine, as if they had never heard of sunstroke, but you can’t
+hunt them. And now you shall have your dinner.’
+
+It was a very quiet picnic, perhaps even a trifle dull; though, at
+the worst, it might be better to picnic alone among the four-footed
+beasts in Charlecote Park, than to assume a forced gaiety in a party
+of stupid people, at the conventional banquet of doubtful lobster and
+tepid champagne, in one of the time-honoured haunts of the cockney
+picknicker. Daphne thought of Midsummer-day in the year that was gone,
+as she sat eating her chicken and sipping her lemonade, half of which
+had been lost in the process of uncorking. How gay she had been, how
+foolishly, unreasonably glad! And now a great deal of the flavour had
+gone out of life since her seventeenth birthday.
+
+‘How happy Lina looks, now that the time for her lover’s return draws
+near!’ she thought. ‘She has something to look forward to, some reason
+for counting the days; while to me time is all alike, one week just the
+same as another. I am a horribly selfish creature. I ought to feel glad
+of her gladness I ought to rejoice in her joy. But Nature made me out
+of poor stuff, didn’t she, Goldie dear?’
+
+She laid her bright head on the collie’s tawny coat. The pale gold of
+her soft flowing hair contrasted and yet harmonised with the ruddy
+hue of the dog, and made a picture fair to look upon. But there was
+no one wandering in Charlecote Park to paint Daphne’s portrait. She
+was very lucky in not being discovered by a party of eager Americans,
+spectacled, waterproofed, hyper-intelligent, and knowing a great deal
+more about Shakespeare’s biography than is known to the duller remnant
+of the Anglo-Saxon race still extant on this side the Atlantic.
+
+She ate her strawberries in dreamy thoughtfulness, and fed Goldie to
+repletion, till he stretched himself luxuriously upon her gown, and
+dreamed of a chase he was too lazy to follow, had he been ever so free.
+Then she shut the empty basket, propped herself up against the rugged
+old trunk, and opened the ‘Idylls.’ It is a book to be read over and
+over again, for ever and ever, just one of those rare books of which
+the soul knows no weariness—like Shakespeare, or Goethe’s Faust, or
+Childe Harold—a book to be opened, haphazard, anywhere.
+
+But Daphne did not so open the volume. Elaine was her poem of poems,
+and it was Elaine she read to-day in that placid shade amidst green
+pastures and venerable trees, under a cloudless sky. Launcelot was her
+ideal man—faulty, but more lovable in his faultiness than even the
+perfect Arthur. Yet what woman would not wish—ay, even the guilty one
+grovelling at his feet—to be Arthur’s wife?
+
+She read slowly, pondering every word, for that fair young Saxon was
+to her a very real personage—a being whose sorrows gave her absolute
+pain as she read. Time had been when she could not read Elaine’s story
+without tears, but to-day her eyes were dry, even to the last, when her
+fancy saw the barge gliding silently down the stream, with the fair
+dead face looking up to the sky, and the waxen hands meekly folded
+above the heart that had broken for love of Launcelot.
+
+‘I wonder how long his sorrow lasted,’ she thought, as she closed
+the book; and then she clasped her hands above the fair head resting
+against the rugged bark of the oak, and gave herself up to day-dreams,
+and let the afternoon wear on as it might, in placid enjoyment of the
+atmosphere and the landscape.
+
+Charlecote church clock had struck five when she plucked herself out of
+dreamland with an effort, unstrapped her dog from the tree, took up her
+empty basket, and started on the journey home. She had ample leisure
+for her walk. Dinner was not to be until half-past eight, and Sir
+Vernon and his daughter were hardly likely to be back till dinner-time.
+
+It was a stately feast to which they had been bidden—a feast in honour
+of somebody’s coming of age: a champagne breakfast for the quality,
+roasted oxen and strong ale for the commonalty, speechifying, military
+bands—an altogether ponderous entertainment. Sir Vernon had groaned
+over the inevitable weariness of the affair in advance, and had talked
+of himself as a martyr to neighbourly feeling.
+
+The homeward walk in the quiet afternoon light was delicious. Goldie,
+released from his strap directly they left Charlecote, ran and leapt
+like a creature possessed. Oh, how he enjoyed himself with the
+first herd they came to, scampering after innocent milch-cows, and
+endangering his life by flying at the foreheads of horned oxen! Daphne
+let him do as he liked. She wandered out of her way a little to follow
+the windings of her beloved river. It was between seven and eight when
+she despatched Goldie to his stable-yard, and went into the cool shady
+hall, where two old orange-trees in great green crockery tubs scented
+the air.
+
+The butler met her on her way to the morning-room.
+
+‘Oh, if you please, Miss Daphne, Mr. Goring has arrived, and would
+like to see you before you dress for dinner. He was so disappointed at
+finding Miss Lawford away from home, and he would like to have a talk
+with you.’
+
+Daphne looked at the tumbled white gown—it was the same she had worn
+last year at Fontainebleau—and thought of her towzled hair. ‘I am
+so shamefully untidy,’ she said; ‘I think I had better dress first,
+Brooks.’
+
+‘Oh, don’t, Miss Daphne. You look nice enough, I’m sure. And I daresay
+Mr. Goring is impatient to hear all about Miss Lawford, or he wouldn’t
+have asked so particular to see you.’
+
+‘Of course not. No; perhaps he won’t notice my untidiness. I’ll risk
+it. Yet first impressions——I don’t want him to think me an underbred
+school-girl,’ muttered Daphne as she opened the drawing-room door.
+
+The room was large, and full of flowers and objects that broke the
+view; and all the glow and glory of a summer sunset was shining in at
+the wide west window.
+
+For a moment or so Daphne could see no one; the room seemed empty of
+humanity. There was the American squirrel revolving in his big airy
+cage; there lay Fluff, the Maltese terrier, curled into a silky ball in
+a corner of the sofa; and that seemed all. But as Daphne went timidly
+towards the window, a figure rose from a low chair, a face turned to
+meet her.
+
+She lifted her clasped hands to her breast with a startled cry.
+
+‘Nero!’
+
+‘Poppæa!’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+‘OF COLOUR PALE AND DEAD WAS SHE.’
+
+
+‘And so you are Daphne?’ said Mr. Goring, taking both her hands, and
+looking at her with an amused smile, not without tender admiration of
+the fair pale face and widely-opened blue eyes. Months afterwards he
+remembered the scared look in those lovely eyes, the death-like pallor
+of the complexion; but just now he ascribed Daphne’s evident agitation
+to a school-girl’s natural discomfiture at being found out in a risky
+escapade.
+
+‘And so you are Daphne?’ he repeated. ‘Why, you told me your father
+was a grocer in Oxford Street. Was not that what school-boys call a
+crumper?’
+
+‘No,’ said Daphne, recovering herself, and a sparkle of mischief
+lighting up her eyes; ‘it was strictly true—of Martha Dibb’s father.’
+
+‘And you adopted your friend’s parent for the nonce; a thoroughly Roman
+custom that of adoption, and in harmony with your Roman name. By the
+way, were you christened Poppæa Daphne, or Daphne Poppæa?’
+
+He had been amusing himself with the squirrel for the last half-hour;
+but he found Daphne’s embarrassment ever so much more amusing than the
+squirrel. He felt no more seriously about the one than about the other.
+
+‘Don’t,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘you must have known quite well from the
+first moment that my name wasn’t Poppæa, just as well as I knew that
+yours wasn’t Nero.’
+
+‘Well, I had a shrewd suspicion that you were romancing about the name;
+but I swallowed the grocer. That was too bad of you. Do you know that
+you made me quite unhappy? I was miserable at the idea that such a girl
+as you could be allied with grocery. A ridiculous prejudice, was it
+not, in a man whose father began life as a day-labourer?’
+
+Daphne had sunk into a low chair by the squirrel’s cage, and was
+feeding that pampered favourite with the green points of some choice
+conifer. She seemed more taken up by his movements than by her future
+brother-in-law. Her agitation had passed, yet she was pale still, only
+the faintest bloom in her fair cheek, the pink of a wild rose.
+
+‘Please don’t tell Lina,’ she pleaded, with her eyes on the squirrel.
+
+‘Oh, she doesn’t know anything about it then?’
+
+‘Not a word. I dared not tell her. When I tried to do so, I became
+suddenly aware how horridly I had behaved. Martha Dibb and I were
+silly, thoughtless creatures, acting on the impulse of the moment.’
+
+‘I don’t think there was much impulse about Miss Dibb,’ said Mr.
+Goring. ‘It seemed to me that she only looked on.’
+
+‘It is disgustingly mean of you to say that!’ exclaimed Daphne,
+recurring to her school-girl phraseology, which she had somewhat
+modified at South Hill.
+
+‘Forgive me. And I must really hold my tongue about our delicious
+picnics? Of course I shall obey you, little one. But I hate secrets,
+and am a bad hand at keeping them. I shall never forget those two happy
+days at Fontainebleau. How strange that you and I, who were destined
+to become brother and sister, should make each other’s acquaintance in
+that haphazard, informal fashion! It seemed almost as if we were fated
+to meet, didn’t it?’
+
+‘Was that the fate you read in my hand?’
+
+‘No,’ he answered, suddenly grave; ‘that was not what I read. Pshaw,’
+he added in a lighter tone, ‘chiromancy is all nonsense. Why should a
+man, not too much given to belief in the things that are good for him
+to believe, pin his faith on a fanciful science of that kind? I have
+left off looking at palms ever since that day at Fontainebleau. And now
+tell me about your sister. I am longing to see her. To think that I
+should have stumbled on just the one particular afternoon on which she
+was to be so long away! I pictured her sitting by yonder bamboo table,
+like Penelope waiting for her Odysseus. Do you know that I have come
+straight through from Bergen without stopping?’
+
+‘And you have not been home to your Abbey?’
+
+‘My Abbey will keep. By-the-by, how is the place looking—the gardens
+all in their beauty, I suppose?’
+
+‘I have never seen it.’
+
+‘Never! Why, I thought Lina would be driving over once or twice a week
+to survey her future domain. I take it positively unkind that you
+have never seen my Abbey: my cloisters where never monk walked; my
+refectory, where never monk ate; my chapel, where no priest ever said
+mass. I should have thought curiosity would have impelled you to go and
+look at Goring Abbey. It is such a charming anomaly. But it pleased my
+poor father to build it, so I must not complain.’
+
+‘I think you ought to be very proud of it when you consider how hard
+your father must have worked for the money it cost,’ said Daphne
+bluntly.
+
+‘Yes, John Giles had to put a long career of honest labour behind him,
+before he became Giles-Goring and owner of Goring Abbey. He was a good
+old man. I feel sorry sometimes that I am not more like him.
+
+‘Lina says you are like your mother.’
+
+‘Yes, I believe I resemble her side of the house. It was by no means
+the more meritorious side, for the Heronvilles were always loose fish,
+while my father was one of the best men who ever wore shoe-leather. Do
+you think Lina will be pleasantly surprised by my return?’
+
+‘Do I think it?’ echoed Daphne. ‘Why, she has been longing for your
+coming—counting every hour. I know that, though she has not said as
+much. I can read her thoughts.’
+
+‘Clever little puss. Daphne, do you know I am quite delighted to find
+that my grocer’s daughter of Fontainebleau Forest is to be my new
+sister.’
+
+‘You are very good,’ returned Daphne rather stiffly. ‘It is eight
+o’clock, so I think, if you’ll excuse me, I had better go and dress for
+dinner.’
+
+‘Wait till your people come home. I’ve ever so many questions to ask.’
+
+‘There is the carriage! You can ask them of Lina herself.’
+
+She ran out of the room by the glass door leading into the
+conservatory, leaving Mr. Goring to meet his betrothed at the opposite
+door. She ran through the conservatory to the garden. The sun was
+sinking in a sea of many-coloured clouds, yonder on the edge of the
+hills, and the river at the bottom of the valley ran between the rushes
+like liquid gold. Daphne stood on the sloping lawn staring at the light
+like a bewildered creature.
+
+She stood thus for some minutes motionless, with clasped hands, gazing
+at the sunset. Then she turned and walked slowly back to the house.
+There was no one to watch her, no one to think of her at this moment.
+Gerald and Lina were together in the drawing-room, steeped in the
+rapture of reunion.
+
+‘Let me be rational, let me be reasonable, if I can,’ Daphne said to
+herself. She re-entered the house by an obscure door at the east end,
+and went up to her own room. There, in the soft evening light, she
+cast herself upon her knees by the bed, and prayed: prayed with all
+the fervour of her untried soul, prayed that she might be kept from
+temptation and led to do the thing that was right. Prayer so earnest in
+a nature so light and reckless was a new experience. She rose from her
+knees like a new creature, and fancied she had plucked the evil weed
+of a fatal fancy out of her heart. She moved about her room calmly and
+quietly, dressed herself carefully, and went back to the drawing-room,
+two minutes before the half-hour, radiant and smiling.
+
+Madoline was still in the gown she had worn at the _déjeuner_. She had
+taken off her hat, and that was all, too happy in her lover’s company
+to spare five minutes for the revision of her toilet. Gerald had done
+nothing to improve his travelling attire. Even the dust of the long
+railroad journey from Hull was still upon his clothes.
+
+‘Gerald tells me that you and he have made friends already, Daphne,’
+said Lina in a happy voice.
+
+She was standing by her lover’s side in front of the open window, while
+Sir Vernon sat in an easy-chair devouring his _Times_, and trying to
+make up for the lost hours since the post came in.
+
+‘Yes; Daphne and I have sworn eternal friendship,’ exclaimed Gerald
+gaily. ‘We mean to be a most devoted brother and sister. It was quite
+wonderful how quickly we broke the ice, and how thoroughly at home we
+became in a quarter of an hour.’
+
+‘Daphne is not a very terrible personage,’ said Madoline, smiling at
+her sister’s bright young face. ‘Well, darling, had you a happy day all
+by yourself? I was almost glad you were not with us. The coming of age
+was a very tiresome business. I had ten times rather have been in our
+own gardens with you.’
+
+‘The whole entertainment was ineffably dull,’ said Sir Vernon, without
+looking from his paper.
+
+And now the well-bred butler glided across the threshold, and gently
+insinuated that dinner was served, if it might be the pleasure of
+his people to come and eat it: whereupon Mr. Goring gave his arm
+to Madoline, and Sir Vernon for the first time since his younger
+daughter’s return felt himself constrained to escort her to the
+dining-room, or leave her to follow in his wake like a lap-dog.
+
+He deliberated for a moment or two as to which he should do, then made
+a hook of his elbow, and looked down at her dubiously, as much as to
+say that she might take it or leave it.
+
+Daphne would have much liked to refuse the proffered boon, but she
+was in a dutiful mood to-night, so she meekly slipped her little
+gloved hand under her parent’s sleeve, and walked by his side to the
+dining-room, where he let her hand drop directly they were inside the
+door.
+
+Everyone at South Hill hated a glare, so the dining-room, like the
+drawing-room, was lighted by moderator lamps under velvet shades. Two
+large brazen lamps with deep-fringed purple shades hung a little way
+above the table; two more lighted the sideboard. The French windows
+stood wide open, and across a balcony full of flowers appeared the
+shadowy landscape and the cool evening sky.
+
+Sir Vernon was tired and out of spirits. He had very little to say
+about anything except the proceedings of the afternoon, and all his
+remarks upon the hospitalities at which he had assisted were of an
+abusive character. He could eat no dinner, his internal economy having
+been thrown altogether out of gear by the barbarity of a solid meal at
+three o’clock. His discontent would have effectually damped the spirits
+of any human beings except lovers. Those privileged beings inhabit a
+world of their own; so Madoline and Gerald smiled at each other, and
+talked to each other across the roses and lilies that beautified the
+dinner-table, and seemed unconscious that anything unpleasant was going
+on.
+
+Daphne watched them thoughtfully. How lovely her sister looked in the
+new light of this perfect happiness—how unaffectedly she revealed her
+delight at her lover’s return!
+
+‘How good it was of you to come back a month sooner than you had
+promised, Gerald!’ she said.
+
+‘My dear girl, I have been pining to come home for the last six months,
+but, as you and your father and I had chalked out a certain portion
+of Europe which I was to travel over, I thought I ought to go through
+with it; but if you knew how heartily sick I am of going from pillar to
+post, of craning my neck to look at the roofs of churches, and dancing
+attendance upon grubby old sacristans, and riding up narrow pathways
+on mules, and having myself and my luggage registered through from the
+bustling commercial city I am sick of to loathing after twenty-four
+hours’ experience, to the sleepy mediæval town which I inevitably tire
+of in ten, you would be able to understand my delight in coming back to
+you and placid Warwickshire. By-the-by, why didn’t you take Daphne to
+see the Abbey? She tells me she has never been over to Goring.’
+
+‘I should have had no pleasure in showing her your house’—‘Our house,’
+interjected Gerald—‘while you were away.’
+
+‘Well, dearest, it was a loving fancy, so I won’t scold you for it.
+We’ll have a——’ He paused for an instant, looking at Daphne with a
+mischievous smile. ‘We’ll have a picnic there to-morrow.’
+
+‘Why a picnic?’ grumbled Sir Vernon. ‘I can understand people eating
+out of doors when they have no house to shelter them, but nobody but
+an idiot would squat on the grass to dine if he could get at chairs
+and tables. Look at your gipsies and hawkers now—you seldom catch them
+picnicking. If their tent or their caravan is ever so small and stuffy
+they generally feed inside it.’
+
+‘Never mind the hawkers,’ exclaimed Gerald contemptuously. ‘A fig for
+commonsense. Of course, everybody in his senses knows that such a
+dinner as this is much more comfortable than the most perfect picnic
+that ever was organised. But, for all that, I adore picnics; and we’ll
+have one to-morrow, won’t we, Daphne?’
+
+He looked across the table at her in the subdued lamplight, smiling,
+and expecting to see a responsive smile in her eyes; but she was
+preternaturally grave.
+
+‘Just as you like,’ she said.
+
+‘Just as I like! What a chilling repulse! Why, unless Madoline and you
+approve of the idea, I don’t care a straw for it. I’ll punish you for
+your indifference, Miss Daphne. You shall have a formal luncheon in
+the refectory, at a table large enough for thirty, and groaning under
+my father’s family plate—Garrard’s, of the reign of Victoria, strictly
+ponderous and utilitarian. What a lovely light there is in the western
+sky!’ said Gerald, as Madoline and her sister rose from the table.
+‘Shall we all walk down to the river, before we join Sir Vernon in the
+billiard-room? You’d like to try your hand against me, sir, I suppose,
+now that I come fresh from benighted lands where the tables have no
+pockets.’
+
+‘Yes; I’ll play a game with you presently.’
+
+Gerald and the two girls went into the verandah, and thence by a
+flight of shallow steps to the lawn. It was a peerless night after a
+peerless day. A young moon was shining above the topmost branches of
+the deodaras, and touching the Avon with patches of silvery light. The
+scene was lovely, the atmosphere delicious, but Daphne felt that she
+was one too many, though Madoline had linked an arm through hers. Those
+two had so much to talk about, so many questions to ask each other.
+
+‘And you have really come home for good,’ said Madoline.
+
+‘For good, dearest; for the brightest fate that can befall a man, to
+marry the woman he loves and settle down to a peaceful placid life in
+the home of his—ancestor. I have been a rover quite long enough, and I
+shall rove no more, except at your command.’
+
+‘There are places I should love to visit with you, Gerald—Switzerland,
+Italy, the Tyrol.’
+
+‘We will go wherever you please, dearest. It will be delightful to me
+to show you all that is fairest on this earth, and to hear you say,
+when we are hunting vainly for some undiscovered nook, where we may
+escape from the tourist herd—“After all, there is no place like home.”’
+
+‘I shall only be too much inclined to say that. I love our own country,
+and the scenery I have known all my life.’
+
+‘We must start early to-morrow, Lina. We have a great deal of business
+to get through at the Abbey.’
+
+‘Business!’
+
+‘Yes, dear; I want you to give me your ideas about the building of new
+hot-houses. With your passion for flowers the present amount of glass
+will never be enough. What do you say to sending MacCloskie over to
+meet us there? His opinion as a practical man might be of use.’
+
+‘If Mr. MacCloskie is going to picnic with you I’ll stay at home,’ said
+Daphne.’ I admire the gentleman as a gardener, but I detest him as a
+human being.’
+
+‘Don’t be frightened, Daphne,’ said Gerald, laughing. ‘It is a
+levelling age, but we have not yet come to picnicking with our
+gardeners.’
+
+‘Mr. MacCloskie is such a very superior person,’ retorted Daphne, ‘I
+don’t know what he might expect.’
+
+They had strolled down to the meadow by the river, a long stretch of
+level pasture, richly timbered, divided from the gardens by a ha-ha,
+over which there was a light iron bridge. They lingered for a little
+while by this bridge, looking across at the river.
+
+‘Do you know that Daphne has started a boat,’ said Madoline, ‘and
+has become very expert with a pair of sculls? She rowed me down to
+Stratford the day before yesterday, and back against the stream.’
+
+‘Indeed! I congratulate you on a delightful accomplishment, Daphne. I
+don’t see why girls should not have their pleasure out of the river as
+well as boys. I’ve a brilliant idea. The Abbey is only five miles up
+the stream. Suppose we charter Daphne’s boat for to-morrow. I can pull
+a pretty good stroke, and the distance will be easy between us two.
+Will your boat hold three of us comfortably, do you think, Daphne?’
+
+‘It would hold six.’
+
+‘Then consider your services retained for to-morrow. I shall enjoy the
+miniature prettiness of the Avon, after the mightier streams I have
+been upon lately.’
+
+‘I don’t suppose Lina would like it,’ faltered Daphne, not appearing
+elated at the idea.
+
+‘Lina would like it immensely,’ said her sister. ‘I shall feel so safe
+if you are with us, Gerald. What a strange girl you are, Daphne! A week
+ago you were eager to carry me to the end of the world in your boat.’
+
+‘You can have the boat, of course, if you like, and I’ll pull if you
+want me,’ returned Daphne, somewhat ungraciously; ‘but I think you’ll
+find five miles of the Avon rather a monotonous business. It is a very
+lovely river if you take it in sections, but as both banks present a
+succession of green fields and pollard willows, it is just possible for
+the human mind to tire of it.’
+
+‘Daphne, you are an absolute cynic—and at seventeen!’ exclaimed Gerald,
+with pretended horror. ‘What will you be by the time you are forty?’
+
+‘If I am alive I daresay I shall be a very horrid old woman,’ said
+Daphne. ‘Perhaps something after the pattern of Aunt Rhoda. I can’t
+conceive anything much worse than that.’
+
+‘Papa will be waiting for his game of billiards,’ said Lina. ‘We had
+better hurry back to the house.’
+
+They were met on the threshold of the conservatory by Mrs. Ferrers.
+That lady had a wonderful knack of getting acquainted with everything
+that happened at South Hill. If there had been a semaphore on the roof
+she could hardly have known things sooner.
+
+‘My dear Gerald, what a delightful surprise you have given us!’ she
+exclaimed. ‘I put on my hat the instant the Rector had said grace. I
+left him to drink his claret alone—a thing that has not happened since
+we were married—and walked over to bid you welcome. How well you are
+looking! How very brown you have grown: I am so glad to see you.’
+
+‘It was very good of you to come over on purpose, Mrs. Ferrers.’
+
+‘May I not be Aunt Rhoda instead of Mrs. Ferrers? I should like it ever
+so much better. Next year I shall be really your aunt, you know.’
+
+‘And the Rector will be your uncle,’ said Daphne pertly. ‘He is mine
+already, and he is ever so much kinder than when I was only his
+parishioner.’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers shot a piercing look, half-angry, half-interrogative, at
+her younger niece. The Rector had shown a reprehensible tendency to
+praise the girl’s beauty, had on one occasion gone so far as to offer
+her a patriarchal kiss, from which Daphne had recoiled involuntarily,
+saying afterwards to her sister that ‘one must draw the line somewhere.’
+
+‘Vernon has gone to bed,’ said Aunt Rhoda; ‘he felt thoroughly wearied
+out after the gathering at Holmsley, which seems from his account to
+have been a very dull business. I am glad the Rector and I declined. A
+cold luncheon is positive death to him.’
+
+‘Then we needn’t go indoors yet awhile,’ said Gerald. ‘It is lovely out
+here. Shall I fetch a wrap for you, Lina?’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers was carefully draped in her China-crape shawl, one of
+Madoline’s wedding gifts to her aunt, and costly enough for a royal
+present.
+
+‘Thanks. There is a shawl on a sofa in the drawing-room.’
+
+‘Let Daphne fetch it,’ interjected Mrs. Ferrers; and her niece flew to
+obey, while the other three sauntered slowly along the broad terrace in
+front of the windows.
+
+There were some light iron chairs and a table at one end of the walk,
+and here they seated themselves to enjoy the summer night.
+
+‘As our English summer is a matter of about five weeks, broken by a
+good deal of storm and rain, we ought to make the most of it,’ remarked
+Gerald. ‘I hope we shall have a fine day for the Abbey to-morrow.’
+
+‘You are going to take Lina to the Abbey?’
+
+‘Yes, for a regular businesslike inspection; that we may see what will
+have to be improved or altered, or added or done away with before next
+year.’
+
+‘How interesting! I should like so much to drive over with you. My
+experience in housekeeping matters might possibly be of use.’
+
+‘Invaluable, no doubt,’ answered Gerald, with his easy-going,
+half-listless air; ‘but we must postpone that advantage until the
+next time. We are going in Daphne’s boat, which will only comfortably
+hold three,’ said Gerald, with a calm contempt for actual truth which
+horrified Madoline, who was rigidly truthful even in the most trivial
+things.
+
+‘Going in Daphne’s boat! What an absurd idea!’
+
+‘Don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda, for it’s my idea,’ remonstrated Gerald.
+
+‘But I can’t help saying it. When you have half-a-dozen carriages at
+your disposal, and when the drive to Goring is absolutely lovely, to go
+in a horrid little boat.’
+
+‘It is a very nice boat, Aunt Rhoda, and Daphne manages it capitally,’
+said Lina.
+
+‘I think it will be a delightfully dreamy way of going,’ said Gerald.
+‘We shall take our time about it. There is no reason we should hurry. I
+shall order a carriage to meet us at the bottom of Goring Lane, where
+we shall land. If we prefer to drive home we can do so.’
+
+‘My dear Gerald, you and Madoline are the best judges of what is
+agreeable to yourselves; but I cannot help thinking that you are
+encouraging Daphne in a most unbecoming pursuit.’
+
+The appearance of Daphne herself with the shawl put a stop to the
+argument. She folded the soft woollen wrap round her sister, and then
+stopped to kiss her.
+
+‘Good-night, Lina,’ she said.
+
+‘Going to bed so early, Daphne? I hope you are not ill.’
+
+‘Only a little tired after my rambles. Good-night, Aunt Rhoda;
+good-night, Mr. Goring,’ and Daphne ran away.
+
+‘Aunt Rhoda might drive over and meet us at Goring, Gerald,’ suggested
+Madoline, who was always thoughtful of other people’s pleasure and did
+not wish her aunt to fancy herself ignored.
+
+‘Certainly. I shall be charmed, if you think it worth your while,’ said
+Gerald.
+
+‘Then I shall certainly come. My ponies want exercise, and to-morrow is
+one of the Rector’s parochial days, so he won’t miss me for an hour or
+two. What time do you contemplate arriving at the Abbey?’
+
+‘Oh, I suppose between one and two, the orthodox luncheon-hour,’
+answered Gerald.
+
+Daphne was up and dressed before five o’clock next morning. She had set
+her little American alarum-clock for five; but that had been a needless
+precaution, since she had not slept above a quarter of an hour at a
+time all through the short summer night. She had seen the last glimmer
+of the fading moon, the first faint glow of sunlight flickering on her
+wall. She stole softly downstairs, unlocked doors and drew bolts with
+the silent dexterity of a professional housebreaker, feeling almost as
+guilty as if she had been one; and in the cool quiet morning, while all
+the world beside herself seemed asleep, she ran lightly across the dewy
+lawn, down to the iron bridge by which she had stood with Madoline and
+Gerald last night. Then she crossed the meadow, wading ankle-deep in
+wet grass, and scaring the placid kine, and thus to the boat-house.
+
+She went in and got into her boat, which was drawn up under cover, and
+carefully protected by linen clothing. She whisked the covering off,
+and seated herself on the floor of the boat in front of the place of
+honour, above which appeared the name of the craft, in gilded letters
+on the polished pine—‘Nero.’
+
+She took out her penknife and began carefully, laboriously, to scrape
+away the gilt lettering. The thing had been so conscientiously done,
+the letters were so sunk and branded into the wood, that the task
+seemed endless; she was still digging and scraping at the first letter
+when Arden church clock struck six, every stroke floating clear and
+sweet across the river.
+
+‘What—an—utter—idiot I was!’ she said to herself, in an exasperated
+tone, emphasising each word with a savage dig of her knife into the
+gilded wood. ‘And how shall I ever get all these letters out before
+breakfast time?’
+
+‘Why attempt it?’ asked a low pleasant voice close at hand, and Daphne,
+becoming suddenly aware of the odour of tobacco mixed with the perfumes
+of a summer meadow, looked up and saw Gerald Goring lounging against
+the door-post, smoking a cigarette.
+
+‘Why erase the name?’ he asked. ‘It is a very good name—classical,
+historical, and not altogether inappropriate. Nero was a boat-builder
+himself, you know.’
+
+‘Was he?’ said Daphne, sitting limply in the bottom of her boat,
+completely unnerved.
+
+‘Yes; the vessel he built was a failure, or at any rate the result of
+his experiment was unsatisfactory, but the intention was original, and
+deserves praise. I am sorry you have spoilt the first letter of his
+name.’
+
+‘Don’t distress yourself,’ exclaimed Daphne, jumping up and stepping
+briskly out of her boat. ‘I am going to change the name of my boat, and
+I thought I could do it this morning as a surprise for Lina; but it
+was a more difficult business than I supposed. And now I must run home
+as fast as I can, and make myself tidy for breakfast. My father is the
+essence of punctuality.’
+
+‘But as half-past eight is his breakfast hour you need not be in a
+desperate hurry. It has only just struck six. Will you come for a
+stroll?’
+
+‘No, thank you. I have ever so much to do before breakfast.’
+
+‘Czerny’s “Studies of Velocity”?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘French grammar?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Be sure you are ready to start directly after breakfast.’
+
+Daphne scampered off through the wet grass, leaving Mr. Goring standing
+by the boat-house door, looking down with an amused smile at the
+mutilated name.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+‘AND SPENDING SILVER HAD HE RIGHT YNOW.’
+
+
+At ten o’clock Daphne was down at the boat-house again, ready for
+the aquatic excursion, looking as fresh and bright as if nothing had
+ever occurred to vex her. She wore a workmanlike attire of indigo
+serge—no gay fluttering scarlet ribbons this time. Her whole costume
+was studiously plain, from the sailor hat to the stout Cromwell shoe
+and dark blue stocking, the wash-leather glove and leathern belt with
+a broad steel buckle. Madoline’s flowing muslin skirts and flowery hat
+contrasted charmingly with her sister’s more masculine attire.
+
+‘This looks like business,’ said Gerald, as Bink ran the boat into the
+water, and held her while the ladies stepped on board. ‘Now, Daphne,
+whichever of us gets tired first must forfeit a dozen pairs of gloves.’
+
+‘I think it will be you, from the look of you,’ returned Daphne, as
+she rolled up her sleeves and took hold of an oar in an off-hand
+waterman-like manner. ‘When you are tired I’ll take the sculls.’
+
+‘Well, you see I am likely to be in very bad form. It is four years
+since I rowed in the ‘Varsity race.’
+
+‘What, you rowed in the great race? What affectation to talk about
+being in bad form. I should think a man could never forget training of
+that kind.’
+
+‘He can never forget the theory, but he may feel the want of practice.
+However, I fancy I shall survive till we get to Goring Lane, and that
+you’ll win no gloves to-day. I suppose you never wear anything less
+than twelve buttons?’
+
+‘Madoline gives me plenty of gloves, thank you,’ replied Daphne with
+dignity. ‘My glove-box is not supported by voluntary contributions.’
+
+‘Daphne, do you know that for a young woman who is speedily to become
+my sister you are barely civil?’ said Gerald.
+
+‘I beg your pardon, I am practising a sisterly manner. I never met with
+a brother and sister yet who were particularly civil to each other.’
+
+They were rowing quietly up the stream, lowering their heads now and
+then to clear the drooping tresses of a willow. The verdant banks,
+the perpetual willows, were beautiful, but with a monotonous beauty.
+It was the ripe middle of the year, when all things are of one rich
+green—meadows and woods and hills—and in a country chiefly pastoral
+there must needs be a touch of sameness in the landscape. Here and
+there a spire showed above the trees, or a gray stone mansion stood
+boldly out upon the green hillside.
+
+Daphne had so arranged cushions and wraps upon the principal seat as to
+conceal the mutilated name. Gerald rowed stroke, she sat in the bows,
+and Madoline reclined luxuriously in the stern with the Maltese terrier
+Fluff in her lap.
+
+‘If we are lucky we shall be at the Abbey an hour and a half before
+your aunt and her ponies,’ said Gerald. ‘It was extremely obliging of
+her to volunteer the inestimable boon of her advice, but I fancy we
+should get on quite as well without her.’
+
+‘It would have been unkind to let her think we didn’t want her,’ said
+Madoline deprecatingly.
+
+‘That is so like you, Lina; you will go through life putting up with
+people you don’t care about, rather than wound their feelings,’ said
+Gerald carelessly.
+
+‘Aunt Rhoda is my father’s only sister. I am bound to respect her.’
+
+‘I’ve no doubt the Old Man of the Sea was a very estimable person in
+the abstract,’ said Gerald, ‘but Sindbad shunted him at the first
+opportunity. Don’t look so distressed, dearest. Aunt Rhoda shall
+patronise us, and dictate to us all our lives, if it please you.
+By-the-by, what has become of your devoted slave and ally, Turchill? I
+expected to find him on the premises when I arrived at South Hill.’
+
+‘He went up to London last week with his mother, to make a round of
+the theatres and picture-galleries. They will be home in a few days, I
+daresay.’
+
+‘I wonder he can exist out of Warwickshire. He is so thoroughly
+bucolic, so permeated by the flavour of his native soil.’
+
+‘He is very kind and good and true-hearted,’ protested Daphne, flushing
+indignantly; ‘and he is your old friend and kinsman. I wonder you can
+speak so contemptuously of him, Mr. Goring.’
+
+‘What, my vixenish little Pop—Daphne,’ cried Gerald, colouring at
+this slip of the tongue, ‘is it thus the cat jumps? I would not
+underrate Edgar for worlds. He is out and away the best fellow I know;
+but, however much you may admire him, little one, that his mind is
+essentially bucolic is a fact—and facts are stubborn things.’
+
+‘You have no right to say that I admire him. I respect and esteem him,
+and I am not ashamed to own as much, though you may think it a reason
+for laughing at me,’ retorted Daphne, still angry. ‘He taught me to row
+this very boat. He used to get up every morning at a ridiculously early
+hour, in order to be at South Hill in time to give me a lesson before
+breakfast.’
+
+‘A man might do twice as much for your _beaux yeux_, and yet deem it no
+self-sacrifice.’
+
+‘Don’t,’ cried Daphne. ‘Didn’t I tell you ages ago that I detest you
+when you flatter me?’
+
+Madoline looked up with momentary wonder at that expression ‘ages
+ago;’ but Daphne was so given to wild exaggerations and a school-girl
+latitude of phrase, that ‘ages ago’ might naturally mean yesterday.
+
+‘Daphne dearest, what has put you out of temper?’ she asked gently.
+‘I’m afraid you’re getting tired.’
+
+‘If she give in before we get to Goring Lane I shall claim a dozen
+pairs of gloves.’
+
+‘I am not the least little bit tired; I could row you to Naseby, if you
+liked,’ replied Daphne haughtily; whereupon the lovers began to talk
+of their own affairs, somewhat lazily, as suited the summer morning
+and the quiet landscape, where a light haze that yet lingered over the
+fields seemed the cool and misty forecast of a blazing afternoon.
+
+Goring Lane was an accommodation road, leading down from the home farm
+to the meadows on the river bank, and here they found a light open
+carriage and a pair of strong country-made gray horses waiting for them.
+
+Gerald had sent his valet over before breakfast to make all
+arrangements for their reception. The man was waiting beside the
+carriage, and to Daphne’s horror she beheld in him the grave gentleman
+in gray who had helped to convey provisions for the Fontainebleau
+picnic: but not a muscle of the valet’s face betrayed the fact that he
+had ever seen this young lady before.
+
+At the end of the lane they came into a shady park-like avenue, and
+then to a gray stone gateway, pillared, mediæval, grandiose; on the
+summit of each granite pillar a griffin of the most correct heraldic
+make grasped a shield, and on the shield were quarterings that hinted
+at a palmer’s pilgrimage in the Holy Land, and a ragged staff that
+suggested kindred with the historic race of Dudley.
+
+The lodge-keeper’s wife and her three children were standing by the
+open gate, ready to duck profusely in significance of delight in their
+lord’s return. The male bird as usual was absent from the nest. Nobody
+ever saw a man at an entrance lodge.
+
+The avenue of limes was of but thirty years’ growth, but there was
+plenty of good old timber on the broad expanse of meadow-land which
+Mr. Goring had converted into a park. There was a broad blue lake in
+the distance, created by the late Mr. Goring, an island in the middle
+of it, also of his creation; while a fleet of rare and costly foreign
+aquatic birds of Mr. Goring’s importation were sailing calmly on the
+calm water. And yonder, in the green valley, with a wooded amphitheatre
+behind it, stood the Abbey, built strictly after the fashion of the
+fifteenth century, but every block of stone and every lattice obviously
+of yesterday.
+
+‘It wouldn’t be half a bad place if it would only mellow down to a
+sober grayness, instead of being so uncomfortably white and dazzling,’
+said Gerald as they drew near the house.
+
+‘It is positively lovely,’ answered Madoline.
+
+She was looking at the gardens, which thirty years of care and outlay
+had made about as perfect as gardens of the Italian style can be. They
+were not such old English gardens as Lord Bacon wrote about. There was
+nothing wild, no intricate shrubberies, no scope for the imagination,
+as there was at South Hill. All was planned and filled in with a Dutch
+neatness. The parterres were laid out in blocks, and in the centre
+of each rose a fountain from a polished marble basin. Statues by
+sculptors of note were placed here and there against a background of
+tall orange-trees, arbutus, or yew. Everything was on a large scale,
+which suited this palatial Italian manner. Such a garden might have
+fitly framed the palace of a Medici or a Borgia; nay, in such a garden
+might Horace have walked by the side of Mæcenas, or Virgil recited a
+portion of his Æneid to Augustus and Octavia. There was a dignity, a
+splendour, in these parterres which Daphne thought finer than anything
+she had seen even at Versailles, whither Madame Tolmache had escorted
+her English pupils on a certain summer holiday.
+
+‘The rose-garden will please you better than this formal pleasaunce,
+I daresay,’ said Gerald. ‘It is on the other side of the house, and
+consists wholly of grass walks and rose-trees. My dear mother gave her
+whole mind to the cultivation and improvement of her gardens. I believe
+she was rather extravagant in this one matter—at least, I have heard my
+father say so. But I think the result justified her outlay.’
+
+‘And yet you want to build more hot-houses on my account, Gerald.
+Surely arrangements that satisfied Lady Geraldine will be good enough
+for me,’ said Madoline.
+
+‘Oh, one ought to go on improving. Besides, you are fonder of exotics
+than my mother was. And the rage for church decoration is getting
+stronger every day. You will have plenty of use for your hot-houses.
+And now we will go and take a sketchy survey of the house, before we
+interview the worthy MacCloskie. Has Miss Lawford’s gardener arrived?’
+Gerald asked of the gentleman in gray, who had occupied the box-seat,
+and was again in attendance at the carriage-door, while a portly butler
+and a powdered footman, both of the true English pattern, waited in the
+Gothic porch.
+
+‘Yes, sir; Mr. MacCloskie is in the housekeeper’s room.’
+
+‘I hope they have given him luncheon.’
+
+‘No, sir, thank you, sir. He would take nothing but a glass of claret
+and a cigar. He has taken a stroll round the gardens, sir, so as to be
+prepared to give an opinion.’
+
+The house was deliciously cool, almost as if ice had been laid on in
+the pipes which were used in winter for hot water. The hall was as
+profoundly Gothic as that at Penshurst—it was difficult to believe
+that the reek of a log fire piled in the middle of the stone floor had
+never gone up through yonder rafters, that the rude vassals of a feudal
+lord had never squatted by the blaze, or slept on yonder ponderous
+oaken settles. Nothing was wanting that should have been there to tell
+of an ancient ancestry. Armour that had been battered and dented at
+Cressy or Bannockburn, or at any rate most skilfully manipulated at
+Birmingham, adorned the walls. Banners drooped from the rafters; heads
+of noble stags that had been shot in Arden’s primeval wood, spears
+and battle-axes that had been used in the Crusades, and collected in
+Wardour Street, gave variety to the artistic decoration of the walls,
+while tapestry of undoubted antiquity hung before the doorways.
+
+These things had given pleasure to Mr. Giles-Goring, but to his son
+they were absolutely obnoxious. Yet the father had been so good a
+father, and had done such honest and useful work in the world before
+he began to amass this trumpery, that the son had not the heart to
+dislodge anything.
+
+They went through room after room—all richly furnished, all strictly
+mediæval: old oak carving collected in the Low Countries; cabinets that
+reached from floor to ceiling; sideboards large enough to barricade a
+Parisian boulevard; all the legends of Holy Writ exemplified by the
+patient Fleming’s chisel; polished oaken floors; panelled walls. The
+only modern rooms were those at one end of the Abbey, which had been
+refurnished by Lady Geraldine during her widowhood, and here there was
+all the lightness and grace of modern upholstery of the highest order.
+Satinwood furniture and pale-tinted draperies; choice water-colours
+and choicer porcelain on the walls; books in every available nook.
+
+‘How lovely!’ cried Daphne, who had not been impressed by the modern
+mediævalism of the other rooms. ‘This is where I should like to live.’
+
+Lady Geraldine’s morning-room looked into the rose-garden. She had not
+been able to do away with the mullioned windows, but a little glass
+door—an anachronism, but vastly convenient—had been squeezed into a
+corner to give her easy access to her favourite garden.
+
+Madoline looked at everything with tender regard. Lady Geraldine had
+been fond of her and kind to her, and had most heartily approved her
+son’s choice. Tears dimmed Lina’s sight as she looked at the familiar
+room, which seemed so empty without the gracious figure of its mistress.
+
+‘I fancied you would like to occupy these rooms by-and-by, Lina,’ said
+Gerald.
+
+‘I should like it of all things.’
+
+‘And can you suggest any alterations—any improvements?’
+
+‘Gerald, do you think that I would change a thing that your mother
+cared for? The rooms are lovely in themselves; but were they ever so
+old-fashioned or shabby, I should like them best as your mother left
+them.’
+
+‘Lina, you are simply perfect!’ exclaimed Gerald tenderly. ‘You are
+just the one faultless woman I have ever met. Chaucer’s Grisel was not
+a diviner creature.’
+
+‘I hope you are not going to try my sister as that horrid man in the
+story tried Grisel,’ cried Daphne, bristling with indignation. ‘I only
+wish I had lived in those days, and had the reversion of Count Walter,
+as a widower. I’d have made him repent his brutality.’
+
+‘I have no doubt you would have proved skilful in the art of
+husband-government,’ said Gerald. ‘But you needn’t be alarmed. Much
+as I admire Grisel I shan’t try to emulate her husband. I could not
+leave my wife in agony, and walk away smiling at the cleverness of my
+practical joke. Well, Lina, then it is settled that in these rooms
+there is to be no alteration,’ he added, turning to Madoline, who had
+been taking up the volumes on a little ebony bookstand and looking at
+their titles.
+
+‘Please make no alteration anywhere. Let the house be as your father
+and mother arranged it.’
+
+‘My sweet conservative! And we are to keep all the old servants, I
+conclude. They are all of my father’s and mother’s choosing.’
+
+‘Pray keep them all. If you could any way find room for MacCloskie,
+without offending your head gardener——’
+
+‘MacCloskie shall be superintendent of your own special hot-houses, my
+darling. It will be an easy, remunerative place—good wages and plenty
+of perquisites.’
+
+A grinding of wheels on the gravel, and a tremendous peal of the bell
+at the principal entrance proclaimed the advent of a visitor.
+
+‘Aunt Rhoda, no doubt,’ said Gerald. ‘Let us be sober.’
+
+They went back to the hall to greet the new arrival. It was Mrs.
+Ferrers’s youthful groom, a smart young gentleman of the tiger species,
+who had made that tremendous peal. Mrs. Ferrers’s roan ponies were
+scratching up the gravel; but Mrs. Ferrers was not alone; a gentleman
+had just dismounted from a fine upstanding bay, and that gentleman was
+Edgar Turchill.
+
+‘So glad to see you here, Aunt Rhoda,’ cried Gerald. ‘Why, Turchill,
+they told me you were in London!’
+
+‘Came home last night, rode over to South Hill this morning, overtook
+Mrs. Ferrers on the way, and——’
+
+‘I asked him to come on with me and to join in our round of
+inspection,’ said Aunt Rhoda. ‘I hope I did not do very wrong.’
+
+‘You did very right. I don’t think Turchill feels himself much of a
+stranger at the Abbey, even though it has been a very inhospitable
+place for the last year or so. And now before we go in for any
+more business let’s proceed to luncheon. Your boat has had a most
+invigorating effect on my appetite, Daphne. I’m simply famished.’
+
+‘So you came in Daphne’s boat. She rows pretty well, doesn’t she?’
+asked Edgar, with a glance of mingled pride and tenderness at his pupil.
+
+‘She might win a cup to-morrow. You have reason to be proud of her.’
+
+They all went into the refectory, where, under the lofty open timber
+roof, a small oval table looked like an island in a sea of Turkey
+carpet and polished oak flooring.
+
+‘It would have served you right if we had had the long dinner-table,’
+Gerald said to Daphne, as he passed her with Mrs. Ferrers on his arm.
+
+‘I thought we were going to picnic in the park,’ said Madoline.
+
+‘Daphne——Neither you nor Daphne seemed to care about it,’ replied
+Gerald.
+
+‘This is a great deal more sensible,’ remarked Mrs. Ferrers.
+
+‘Oh, I don’t know; it’s awfully jolly to eat one’s luncheon under the
+trees in such weather as this,’ said Edgar.
+
+‘For Mr. Turchill’s particular gratification, we will have afternoon
+tea in the cloisters,’ said Gerald. ‘Blake,’ to the butler, ‘let there
+be tea at half-past four on the grass in the cloisters.’
+
+Daphne could eat or drink very little, though Edgar, who sat next
+to her, was pressing in his offers of lobster mayonnaise, and cold
+chicken, cutlets, sole à la maître d’hôtel, Perigord pie. She was
+looking about her at the portraits on the walls.
+
+Facing her hung Prescott Knight’s picture of the man who began his
+career by wheeling barrows, and who ended it by building mighty
+viaducts, levelling hills, filling valleys, making the crooked paths
+straight. It was a brave honest English face, plain, rugged even, the
+painter having in no wise flattered his sitter; but a countenance that
+was pleasanter to the eye than many a handsome face. A countenance that
+promised truth and honour, manliness and warm feelings in its possessor.
+
+Daphne looked from the portrait on the wall to the present master of
+the Abbey. No; there was not one point of resemblance between Gerald
+Goring and his father.
+
+Then she looked at another portrait hanging in the place of honour
+above the wide Gothic mantelpiece. Lady Geraldine, by Buckner: the
+picture of an elegant high-bred woman of between thirty and forty,
+dressed in amber satin and black lace, one bare arm lifted to pluck a
+rose from a lattice, the other hand resting on a marble balustrade,
+across which an Indian shawl had been flung carelessly. Face and figure
+were both perfect after their kind—figure tall and willowy, a swan’s
+neck, a proud and pensive countenance, with eyes of the same doubtful
+colour as Gerald’s, the same dreamy look in them. Then Daphne turned
+her gaze to the other end of the room, where hung the famous Sir Peter
+Lely, a replica of the well-known picture in Hampton Court, for which
+replica Mr. Giles-Goring had paid a preposterous price to a poor and
+proud member of his wife’s family, who was lucky enough to possess it.
+Strange that a singleminded, honest-hearted man like John Giles-Goring
+should have been proud of his son’s descent from a king’s mistress, and
+should have hung the portrait of Felicia, Countess of Heronville, above
+the desk at which he read family prayers to his assembled household.
+Yes; Lady Heronville’s eyes were like Gerald’s, dreamily beautiful.
+
+Everybody at the table had plenty to say, except Daphne. She was
+absorbed by her contemplation of the pictures. Edgar was concerned at
+her want of appetite. He tried to entertain her by telling her of the
+plays and pictures he had seen.
+
+‘Your father ought to take you to town before the season is over.
+There is so much to see,’ he said; ‘and though I am told that all the
+West End tradespeople are complaining, it seems to me that London was
+never so full as this year. Hyde Park in the morning and afternoon is
+something wonderful.’
+
+‘I should like to go to the opera,’ said Daphne rather listlessly.
+‘Madame Tolmache took us to hear “Faust” one evening. She said that
+an occasional visit to the opera was the highest form of cultivation
+for the youthful mind. I believe she had a box given her by the
+music-master, and that she turned it to her own advantage that
+way—charging it in her bills, don’t you know. I shall never forget
+that evening. It was at the end of August, and Paris was wrapped in a
+white mist, and the air had a breathless, suffocating feeling, and the
+streets smelt of over-ripe peaches. But when we got out of the jolting
+fly that took us from the station to the theatre, and went to a box
+that seemed in the clouds, we had to go up so many stairs to reach it,
+and the music began, and the curtain went up, it was like being in a
+new world. I felt as if I were holding my breath all the time. Even
+Martha Dibb—that stupid, good-natured girl I told you about—seemed
+spell-bound, and sat with her mouth open, gasping like a fish. Nilsson
+was Marguerite, and Faure was Mephistopheles. I shall remember them to
+the end of my life.’
+
+‘You’ll hear them again often, I hope. Nilsson was singing the other
+night, when I took my mother to hear Wagner’s great opera. The music
+is quite the rage, I believe; but I don’t like it as well as “Don
+Giovanni.”’
+
+Luncheon was over by this time—a formal ceremonious luncheon, such as
+Daphne detested. It was her punishment for having been uncivil last
+night when the picnic idea was mooted. And now they all repaired to the
+gardens, and perambulated the parterre, and criticised the statues:
+Leda with her swan, Venus with an infant Cupid, Hebe offering her cup,
+Ganymede on his eagle—all the most familiar personages in Lemprière.
+The fountains were sending up their rainbow spray in the blazing
+afternoon sun. The geraniums, and calceolarias, and pansies, and
+petunias, and all the tribe of begonias, and house-leeks, newly bedded
+out, seemed to quiver in the fierce bright light.
+
+‘For pity’s sake let us get out of this burning flowery furnace,’ cried
+Gerald. ‘Let’s go to the rose-garden; it’s on the shady side of the
+house, and within reach of my mother’s favourite tulip-trees.’
+
+The rose-garden was a blessed refuge after that exposed parterre facing
+due south. Here there was velvet turf on which to walk, and here were
+trellised screens and arches wreathed with the yellow clusters of
+the Celine Forestier, and the Devoniensis. Mrs. Ferrers was a person
+who always discoursed of flowers by their botanical or fashionable
+names. She did not call a rose a rose, but went into raptures over a
+Marguerite de St. Armand, a Garnet Wolseley, a Gloire de Vitry, or an
+Etienne Levet, as the case might be.
+
+Here, smoking his cigar, which he politely suppressed at their
+approach, they discovered Mr. MacCloskie, the hard-faced, sandy-haired
+Scottish gardener.
+
+‘You have been taking a look at my grounds, I hear, MacCloskie,’ Mr.
+Goring said pleasantly.
+
+‘Yes, sir; I’ve looked about me a bit. I think I’ve seen pretty well
+everything.’
+
+‘And the hot-houses leave room for improvement, I suppose?’
+
+‘Well, sir, I’m not wishing to say anything disrespectful to your
+architect,’ began MacCloskie, with that deliberation which gave all
+his speeches an air of superior wisdom, ‘but if he had tried his
+hardest to spend the maximum of money in attaining the minimum of space
+and accommodation—to say nothing of his ventilation and his heating
+apparatus, which are just abominable—he couldn’t have succeeded better
+than he has—unconsciously.’
+
+‘Dear me, Mr. MacCloskie, that’s a bad account. And yet the gardeners
+here have managed to rub on very decently for a quarter of a century,
+with no better accommodation than you have seen to-day.’
+
+‘Ay, sir, that’s where it is. They just roobed on, poor fellows. And I
+can only say that it’s very creditable to them to do as well as they
+have done, and if they’re about a quarter of a century behind the times
+nobody can blame them.’
+
+‘Then we must build new houses—that’s inevitable, I conclude.’
+
+‘Yes, sir, if you want to grow exotics.’
+
+‘Yet I used to see a good deal of stephanotis about the rooms in my
+father’s time.’
+
+‘Ay, there’s a fine plant growing in a bit of a glass—shed,’ said
+Mr. MacCloskie with ineffable contempt. ‘Necessity’s the mother of
+invention, Mr. Goring. Your gardeners have done just wonders. But with
+all deference to you, sir, that kind of thing wouldn’t suit me. And
+if Miss Lawford has any idea of my coming here by-and-by——’ with a
+respectful glance at his mistress, as he stood at ease, contemplating
+the spotless lining of his top-hat.
+
+‘Miss Lawford would like you to continue in her service when she is
+Mrs. Goring. Perhaps you will be good enough to give me an exact
+specification of the space you would require, and the form of house you
+would suggest. I wish Miss Lawford to be in no way a loser when she
+exchanges South Hill for Goring Abbey.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir, you are very good, sir,’ murmured the Scotchman, as
+if it were for his gratification the houses were to be built. ‘This is
+a very fine place, sir; it would be a pity if it were to be behind the
+times in any particular.’
+
+The head gardener bowed and withdrew, everyone—even Aunt
+Rhoda—breathing more freely when he had vanished.
+
+‘Isn’t he too utterly horrid?’ asked Daphne. ‘If there is a being I
+detest in this world it is he. Were I in Lina’s place I should take
+advantage of my marriage to get rid of him; but she will just go down
+to her grave domineered over by that man,’ concluded Daphne, mimicking
+MacCloskie’s northern tongue.
+
+‘He is not the most agreeable person in the world,’ said Lina; ‘but he
+is thoroughly conscientious.’
+
+‘Did you ever know a disagreeable person who did not set up for being a
+paragon of honesty?’ exclaimed Daphne contemptuously.
+
+They roamed about the rose-garden, which was a lovely place to loiter
+in upon a summer day, and lingered under the tulip-trees, where there
+were rustic chairs and a rustic table, and every incentive to idleness.
+Beyond the tulip-trees there was a shrubbery on the slope of the hill,
+a shrubbery which sheltered the rose-garden from bleak winds, and
+made it a thoroughly secluded spot. While the rest of the party sat
+talking under the big broad-leaved trees, Daphne shot off to explore
+the shrubbery. The first thing that attracted her attention was a large
+wire cage among the laurels.
+
+‘Is that an aviary?’ she asked.
+
+‘No,’ answered Gerald, rising and going over to her. ‘These are my
+father’s antecedents.’
+
+He pulled away the laurel branches which had spread themselves in front
+of the cage, and Daphne saw that it contained only a shabby old barrow,
+a pickaxe, and shovel.
+
+‘Those were the stock-in-trade with which my father began his career,’
+he said. ‘I don’t believe he had even the traditional half-crown. I’ve
+no doubt if he had possessed such a coin his mates would have made him
+spend it on beer. He began life, a barefooted, ignorant lad, upon a
+railroad in the north of England; and before his fortieth birthday he
+was one of the greatest contractors and one of the best-informed men
+of his time; but he never mastered the right use of the aspirate, and
+he never could bring himself to wear gloves. It was his fancy to keep
+those old tools of his, and to take his visitors to look at them, after
+they had gone the round of house and gardens.’
+
+‘I hope you are proud of him,’ said Daphne, with a bright penetrating
+glance which seemed to pierce Mr. Goring’s soul. ‘I should hate you
+if I thought that, even for one moment in your life, you could feel
+ashamed of such a father.’
+
+‘Then I’m afraid I must endure your hate,’ said Gerald. ‘No; I have
+never felt ashamed of my father: he was the dearest, kindest, most
+unselfish, most indulgent father that ever spoiled an unworthy son.
+But I have occasionally felt ashamed of that barrow, when it has been
+exhibited and explained to a new acquaintance, and I have seen that the
+now acquaintance thought the whole thing—the mock mediæval abbey, and
+the barrow, and my dear simple-hearted dad—one stupendous joke.’
+
+‘I should be more ashamed of Felicia, Countess of Heronville, than of
+that barrow, if I were you,’ exclaimed Daphne, flushed and indignant.
+
+‘You little radical! Mistress Felicia was by no means an exemplary
+person, but she was one of the loveliest women at Charles’s court,
+where lovely women congregated by common consent, while all the ugly
+ones buried themselves at their husbands’ country seats, and thought
+that some fiery comet must be swooping down upon the world because of
+wickedness in high places. Don’t be too hard upon poor Lady Heronville.
+She died in the zenith of her charms, while quite a young woman.’
+
+‘Do you think she ought to be pitied for that?’ demanded Daphne. ‘Why,
+it was the brightest fate Heaven could give her. The just punishment
+for her evil ways would have been a long loveless old age, and to
+see her beauty fade day by day, and to know that the world she loved
+despised and forgot her.
+
+    “Whom the gods love die young, was said of old;
+     And many deaths do they escape by this.”’
+
+‘Where did you find those lines, little one?’
+
+‘In a book we used to read aloud at Madame Tolmache’s, “Gems from
+Byron.”’
+
+‘Oh, I see! Mere chippings, diamond dust. I was afraid you’d been at
+the Koh-i-noor itself.’
+
+‘Are we to have some tea, Gerald?’ asked Madoline, crossing to them and
+looking at her watch as she came. ‘It is half-past four, and we must be
+going home soon.’
+
+‘To the cloisters, ladies and gentlemen, to all that there is of the
+most mediæval in the Abbey.’
+
+They passed under a Gothic archway and found themselves on a square
+green lawn, in the midst of which was another fountain in a genuine old
+marble basin, a Roman relic dug up thirty years ago in the peninsula
+of Portland. A cloistered walk surrounded this grass-plot. A striped
+awning had been put up beside the fountain, and under this the
+tea-table was spread.
+
+‘Now, Lina, let us see if you can manage that ponderous tea-kettle,’
+said Gerald.
+
+‘It is the handsomest I ever saw,’ sleepily remarked Mrs. Ferrers, who
+had found the afternoon somewhat dreary, since nobody had seemed to
+want her advice about anything. ‘But I must confess that I prefer the
+Rector’s George the Second silver, and old Swansea cups and saucers, to
+the highest exemplars of modern art.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+‘YEVE ME MY DETH, OR THAT I HAVE A SHAME.’
+
+
+Sir Vernon Lawford was sitting alone in his study on the morning after
+the visit to Goring Abbey, when the door opened suddenly with a sharp
+jerk, and his younger daughter stood before him. The very manner in
+which the door opened told him, before he looked up from his desk, that
+the intruder was Daphne, and not the always welcome Madoline.
+
+He looked at his daughter with cold severe eyes, as at a person who
+had no right to be there. Ever since she could remember, Daphne had
+feared her father much more than she loved him; but never had he
+seemed to her so awful a being as he appeared this morning in his
+own room, surrounded by all the symbols of power—the bronze bust of
+Cicero looking down at him from the bookcase; his despatch-box open
+at his side, bristling with pen-knives and paper-knives, and stern
+official stationery; his ponderous silver inkstand, presented by the
+Warwickshire yeomanry in acknowledgment of his merits as colonel;
+his russia-leather bound dictionaries and directories, and brazen
+letter-weighing machine—and all the pomp and circumstance of his
+business life about him.
+
+‘Well, Daphne, what do you want?’ he asked, looking at her without a
+ray of sympathetic feeling in his handsome gray eyes.
+
+‘If you please, papa,’ she faltered, blushing deeply under that severe
+gaze, and pleating up the edge of her lawn-tennis pinafore in supreme
+nervousness, ‘I don’t think I’m really finished.’
+
+‘Finished!’ he exclaimed, looking at her as if he thought she was an
+idiot. ‘Finished what? You never finish anything, or begin anything
+either, so far as I can hear, that is worth doing.’
+
+‘My education, I mean, papa,’ she said, looking at him with eyes so
+lovely in hue and expression, so piteous in their timid pleading, that
+they ought to have touched him. ‘I know you sent me to Madame Tolmache
+to be finished, and that she was very expensive; but I’m afraid I came
+away horribly ignorant; and I begin to feel that a year or two more of
+schooling would be of very great value to me. I am older now, don’t
+you know, papa; and I should try more earnestly to improve myself.
+Indeed, indeed, papa, I would work very hard this time,’ urged Daphne,
+remorsefully remembering how little she had worked in the past. ‘I
+don’t care where you send me: to Asnières, or to Germany, or anywhere:
+so that I could only go on with my education.’
+
+‘Go on with it at home,’ answered Sir Vernon contemptuously. ‘You can
+read, and write, and spell, I suppose. Yes; I have some of your letters
+asking me for different things in those pigeon-holes. Any woman who can
+do as much as that can improve herself. There are books enough on those
+shelves’—with a glance at his classical and correct collection—‘to make
+you wiser than any woman need be. But as for this freak of wanting to
+go back to school——’
+
+‘It is no freak, papa. It is my most earnest desire. I feel it would be
+better—for all of us.’
+
+She had changed from red to white by this time, and stood before her
+father like a culprit, downcast and deadly pale.
+
+‘It would not be better for me who would have to pay the bills. I have
+paid a pretty penny already for your education; and you may suppose
+how vastly agreeable it is to me to hear your frank confession of
+ignorance.’
+
+‘It is best for me to tell the truth, papa. Do not deny me this favour.
+It is the first great thing I have ever asked of you.’
+
+‘It is a very foolish thing, and I should be a fool if I humoured your
+caprice.’
+
+She gave a little cry of mental pain.
+
+‘How can I convince you that it is no caprice?’ she asked despairingly.
+‘I was lying awake all last night thinking about it. I am most
+thoroughly in earnest, papa.’
+
+‘You were thoroughly in earnest about your boat; and now you are tired
+of it. You were intensely anxious to come home; and now you are tired
+of home. You are a creature of whims and fancies.’
+
+‘No, I am not tired of my boat,’ she cried passionately. ‘I love it
+with all my heart, and the dear river, and this place, and Madoline—and
+you—if you would only let me love you. Father,’ she said in a low
+tremulous voice, coming hurriedly to her father and kneeling at his
+feet, with clasped hands uplifted beseechingly, ‘there are times in a
+woman’s life when a light shines suddenly upon her, showing her where
+her duty lies. I believe that it is my duty to go back to school,
+somewhere in France, or Germany, where I can get on with my education
+and grow serious and useful, as a woman ought to be. It will be very
+hard, it will be parting from all I love best in the world, but I feel
+and know that it is my duty. Let me go, dear father. The outlay of a
+few pounds cannot affect you.’
+
+‘Can it not? That shows how little you know of the world. When a man is
+overweighted as I am in this place, living up to every sixpence of his
+income, and so fettered that he cannot realise an acre of his estate,
+every hundred he has to spend is of moment. Your education has been
+a costly business already; and I distinctly refuse to spend another
+sixpence on it. If you have not profited by my outlay, so much the
+worse for you. Get up, child.’ She was still on her knees, looking
+at him in blank despair. ‘This melo-dramatic fooling is the very last
+thing to succeed with a man of my stamp. I detest heroics.’
+
+‘Very well, father,’ she answered in a subdued tone, strangling her
+sobs and standing straight and tall before him. ‘I hope if you should
+ever have cause to blame me for anything in the future you will
+remember this refusal to-day.’
+
+‘I shall blame you if you deserve blame, you may be sure of that,’ he
+answered harshly.
+
+‘And never praise me when I deserve praise, and never love me, or
+sympathise with me, or be a father to me—except in name.’
+
+‘Precisely,’ he said, looking downward with a gloomy brow. ‘Except in
+name. And now be kind enough to leave me. I have a good many letters to
+write.’
+
+Daphne obeyed without a word. When she was in the corridor outside, and
+had shut the door behind her, she stopped for a few moments leaning
+against the wall, looking straight before her with a countenance of
+inexpressible sadness.
+
+‘It was the only thing I could do,’ she murmured with a heavy sigh.
+
+Sir Vernon told his elder daughter that afternoon of Daphne’s absurd
+fancy about going back to school.
+
+‘Did you ever hear of such a mass of inconsistency?’ he exclaimed
+angrily. ‘After worrying you continually with appealing letters to be
+brought home, she is tired of us all and wants to be off again in less
+than six months.’
+
+‘It is strange, papa, especially in one who is so thoroughly sweet and
+loving,’ said Madoline thoughtfully. ‘Do you know I’m afraid it must be
+my fault.’
+
+‘In what way?’
+
+‘I have been urging her to continue her education; and perhaps I may
+have inadvertently given her the idea that she ought to go back to
+school.’
+
+‘That is simply to suppose her an idiot, and unable to comprehend plain
+English,’ retorted Sir Vernon testily. ‘You are always making excuses
+for her. Hark!’ he cried, as a bright girlish laugh came ringing across
+the summer air. ‘There she is, playing tennis with Turchill. Would you
+suppose that two hours ago she was kneeling to me like a tragedy queen,
+her eyes streaming with tears, entreating to be sent back to school?’
+
+‘I’ll reason her out of her fancy, dear father. She always gives way to
+me when I wish it.’
+
+‘I am glad she has just sense enough to understand your superiority.’
+
+‘Dearest father, if you would be a little more affectionate to her—in
+your manner, I mean—I believe she would be a great deal happier.’
+
+Another ringing laugh from Daphne.
+
+‘She is monstrously unhappy, is she not?’ exclaimed Sir Vernon. ‘My
+dear Lina, that girl is a born _comédienne_. She will always be acting
+tragedy or comedy all her life through. This morning it was tragedy;
+this afternoon it is comedy. Do not let yourself be duped by her.’
+
+‘Believe me, papa, you misjudge her.’
+
+‘I hope it may be so.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+‘Daphne, what is this fancy of yours about going back to school?’ asked
+Madoline, when she and her sister were sitting in the conservatory that
+evening in the sultry summer dusk, while Sir Vernon and the two young
+men were talking politics over their claret. ‘I was quite grieved to
+hear of it, believing, as I did, that you were very happy at home.’
+
+‘Why, so I am—intensely happy—with you, darling,’ answered Daphne,
+taking her sister’s hand, and twisting the old-fashioned brilliant
+hoops, which Lina had inherited from her grandmother, round and round
+upon the slender finger. ‘So I am, dear, utterly happy. But happiness
+is not the be-all and end-all of this life, is it, Lina? The Rector is
+continually telling us that it isn’t, in those prosy port-winey old
+sermons of his; but if he were only candid about his feelings he would
+say that the end and aim of this life was dinner. I don’t suppose I was
+born only to be happy, was I, Lina? We unfortunate mortals are supposed
+to belong to the silkworm rather than to the butterfly species, and to
+work out a career of usefulness in the grub and worm stages, before
+we earn the right to flutter feebly for a little while as elderly
+moths. Youth, from a Christian point of view, is meant for work and
+self-abnegation, and duty, and all that kind of thing; isn’t it, Lina?’
+
+‘Every stage of life has its obligations, dearest; but your duties
+are very easy ones,’ answered Madoline gently. ‘You have only to be
+respectful and obedient to your father, and to do as much good as you
+can to those who need your kindness, and to be grateful to God for the
+many good gifts He has lavished upon you.’
+
+‘Yes; I suppose that upon the whole I am a very fortunate young person,
+although I am a pauper,’ said Daphne sententiously. ‘I have youth, and
+the use of all my faculties, and a ridiculously good constitution. I
+know I can walk knee-deep in wet grass and never catch cold, and drink
+quarts of iced water when I am in a fever of heat, and do all manner
+of things that people consider tantamount to suicide, and be none the
+worse for my folly. And then I have a fine house to live in; though I
+have the sense that I am nobody in it; and I have a very aristocratic
+father—to look at. Yes, Madoline, I have all these things, and they are
+of no account to me; but I have your love, and that is worth them all
+a hundred times over.’
+
+The sisters sat with clasped hands, Madoline touched by the wayward
+girl’s affection. The moon was shining above the deodaras; the last of
+the nightingales was singing amidst the darkness of the shrubbery.
+
+‘Why do you want to go back to school, Daphne?’ asked Lina again,
+coaxingly.
+
+‘I don’t want to go.’
+
+‘But this morning you were begging papa to send you back.’
+
+‘Yes; I had an idea that I ought to improve myself—this morning. But
+as papa refused to grant my request in a very decisive manner, I have
+put the notion out of my head. I thought that another year with Madame
+Tolmache might have improved my French, and reconciled me to the
+necessity for a subjunctive mood, which I never could see while I was
+at Asnières; or that a twelvemonth in Germany might have enabled me to
+distinguish the verbs that require the dative case after them, from the
+verbs that are satisfied with the accusative, which at present is a
+thing utterly beyond me. But papa says no, and, as I am much fonder of
+boating and tennis and billiards than of study, I am not going to find
+fault with papa’s decision.’
+
+This was all said so lightly, with so much of the natural recklessness
+of a high-spirited girl who has never had a secret in her life, that
+Madoline had not a moment’s doubt of her sister’s candour. Yet there
+was a hardness in Daphne’s tone to-night that grieved her.
+
+‘Who is fond of billiards?’ asked Gerald’s lazy tones, a little way
+above them, and, looking up, they saw him leaning with folded arms upon
+the broad marble balustrade. ‘Are you coming up to the drawing-room to
+give us some music, or are we coming down to the billiard-room to play
+a match with you?’ he inquired.
+
+‘Whichever my father likes,’ answered Madoline.
+
+‘Sir Vernon will not play this evening. He has gone to his room to read
+the evening papers. I think he has not forgiven Turchill for the series
+of flukes by which he won that game last night. Edgar and I will have
+a clear stage and no favour this evening, and we mean to give you two
+young ladies a tremendous licking.’
+
+‘You will have an easy victim in me,’ said Madoline. ‘I have not played
+half-a-dozen times since you left home.’
+
+‘Devotion surpassing Penelope’s. And Daphne, I suppose, is still a tyro
+at the game. We must give you seventy-five out of a hundred.’
+
+‘You are vastly condescending,’ exclaimed Daphne, drawing herself up.
+‘You will give me nothing! I don’t care how ignominiously I am beaten;
+but I will not be treated like a baby.’
+
+‘_Und etwas schnïppish doch zugleich_,’ quoted Mr. Goring, smiling to
+himself in the darkness.
+
+And now Edgar Turchill came out of the drawing-room, and the two young
+men went down the shallow flight of steps to the conservatory, where
+Madoline and her sister were still seated in their wicker-work chairs
+in front of the open door, through which the moonlit garden looked so
+fair a scene of silent peace.
+
+‘Daphne is quite right to reject your humiliating concessions,’ said
+Edgar. ‘She and I will play against you and Madoline, and beat you.’
+
+‘Easily done, my worthy Saxon,’ answered Gerald, who was apt to make
+light of his friend’s ancient lineage, in a good-natured easy-going
+way. ‘I have never given more than a fraction of my mind to billiards.’
+
+‘Then you must be a deuced bad player,’ said Edgar bluntly. They all
+went down into the billiard-room, where Daphne’s eyes sparkled with
+unaccustomed fire in the lamplight, as if the mere notion of the coming
+contest had fevered her excitable brain. Turchill, who was thoroughly
+earnest in his amusements, took off his coat with the air of a man who
+meant business. Gerald Goring slipped out of his as if he were going to
+lie down for an after-dinner nap on one of the broad morocco-covered
+divans.
+
+And now began the fight. Gerald and Madoline were obviously nowhere,
+from the very beginning. Daphne had a firmness of wrist, a hawklike
+keenness of eye, an audacity of purpose that accomplished miracles.
+The more difficult the position the better her stroke. Her boldness
+conquered where a more cautious player must have failed. She sent her
+adversaries’ ball rattling into the pockets with a dash that even
+stimulated Gerald Goring to applaud his antagonist. And while she
+swelled the score by the most startling strokes, Edgar crept quietly
+after her with his judicious and careful play—doing wonderful things
+with his arms behind his back, in the easiest manner.
+
+‘I throw up the sponge,’ cried Gerald, after struggling feebly against
+his fate. ‘Lina, dearest, forgive me for my candour, but you are
+playing almost as wretchedly as I. We are both out of it. You two young
+gladiators had better finish the game by playing against each other up
+to a hundred, while Lina and I look on and applaud you. I like to see
+youth energetic, even if its energies are misdirected.’
+
+He seated himself languidly on the divan which commanded the best view
+of the table. Lina sat by his side, her white hands moving with an
+almost rhythmical regularity as she knitted a soft woollen comforter
+for one of her numerous pensioners.
+
+‘My busy Penelope, don’t you think you night rest from your labours now
+that Ulysses is safe at home, and the suitors are all put to flight?’
+asked Gerald, looking admiringly at the industrious hands. ‘You have no
+idea how horribly idle you make me feel.’
+
+‘I think idleness is the privilege of your sex, Gerald; but it would be
+the penalty of ours. I am wretched without some kind of work.’
+
+‘Another case of misdirected energy,’ sighed Gerald, throwing himself
+lazily back against the India-matting dado, and clasping his hands
+above his head, as he watched the antagonists.
+
+Daphne was playing as if her life depended on her victory. Her slim
+figure was braced like a young athlete’s, every muscle of the round
+white arm defined under her muslin sleeve—the bare supple wrist and
+delicate hand looking as strong as steel. She moved round the table
+with the swift lightness of some wild thing of the woods—graceful, shy,
+untamable, half savage, yet wholly beautiful.
+
+Edgar Turchill went on all the while in his businesslike way, playing
+with either hand, and behaving just as coolly as if he had been playing
+against Sir Vernon. Yet every now and then, when it was Daphne’s turn
+to play, he fell into a dreamy contemplative mood, and stood on one
+side watching her as if she were something too wonderful to be quite
+human.
+
+‘There’s a stroke!’ he cried, as she left him tight under the cushion,
+with nothing to play for. ‘I taught her. Oughtn’t I to be proud of such
+a pupil?’
+
+‘You taught me sculling, and lawn-tennis, and billiards,’ said Daphne,
+considering what she should do next. ‘All I have ever learnt worth
+knowing.’
+
+‘Daphne!’ murmured Madoline, looking up reproachfully from her ivory
+needles.
+
+‘I say it advisedly,’ argued Daphne, making another score. ‘Edgar, I am
+not at all sure you are marking honestly. Mr. Goring would mark for us
+if he were not too lazy.’
+
+‘Not too lazy,’ murmured Gerald languidly, ‘but too delightfully
+occupied in watching you. I would not spoil my pleasure by mixing it
+with business for the world.’
+
+‘What is the use of book-learning?’ continued Daphne, going on with
+her argument. ‘I maintain that Edgar has taught me all I know worth
+knowing, for he has taught me how to be happy. I adore the river; I
+doat upon billiards; and next best after billiards I like lawn-tennis.
+Do you suppose I shall ever be happier for having learnt French
+grammar, or the Rule of Three!’
+
+‘Daphne, you are the most inconsistent person I ever met with,’ said
+Madoline, almost angry. ‘Only this morning you wanted to go back to
+school to finish your education.’
+
+‘Did she?’ asked Gerald, suddenly attentive.
+
+‘That was all nonsense,’ exclaimed Daphne, colouring violently.
+
+Mr. Turchill laughed heartily at the idea.
+
+‘Go back to school!’ he exclaimed. ‘What, after having tasted liberty,
+and learnt to shoot Stratford bridge, and to beat her master at
+billiards—for that last cannon makes the hundred, Daphne! Back to
+school, indeed! What a little humbug you must be to talk of such a
+thing!’
+
+‘Yes,’ answered Daphne coolly, as she put away her cue, and came
+quietly round to her sister’s side; ‘I am a little bit of a humbug. I
+think I try to humbug myself sometimes. I persuaded myself this morning
+that I really thirsted for knowledge; but my father contrived to quench
+that righteous thirst with a very big dose of cold water—so henceforth
+I renounce all attempts to improve myself.’
+
+The clock on the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after ten.
+
+‘I ordered my dog-cart for ten,’ said Gerald; ‘I hope we have not
+transgressed, Lina, by staying so late?’
+
+‘I am not going till eleven, unless Miss Lawford sends me away,’ said
+Turchill. ‘Eleven is the mystic hour at which Sir Vernon usually tells
+me to go about my business. I know the ways and manners of the house
+better than a wretched wanderer like you, whose last idea of time is
+derived from some wretched old Dalecarlian town-clock.’
+
+‘We had better go back to the drawing-room,’ suggested Madoline. ‘My
+father has finished his letters by this time, I daresay.’
+
+‘Then good-night everybody,’ said Daphne. ‘I’m going into the garden to
+cool myself after that fearful struggle, and then to bed.’
+
+She ran off through the conservatory while Gerald was opening the
+opposite door for Madoline to go up to the drawing-room by the indoor
+staircase.
+
+Daphne stopped to draw breath on the moonlit terrace.
+
+‘How ridiculously I have been gabbling!’ she said to herself, with her
+hands clasping her burning forehead. ‘Why can’t I hold my tongue? I am
+detestable to myself and everybody.’
+
+‘Daphne,’ said someone close at her side, in a tone of friendliest
+concern, ‘I’m afraid you’re really tired.’
+
+It was Edgar Turchill, who had followed her through the conservatory.
+
+‘Tired! Not at all. I would play against you again to-night—and beat
+you—if it were not too late.’
+
+‘But I am sure you are tired; there is a something in your
+voice—strained, unnatural. Have you been vexed to-day? My poor little
+Daphne,’ he went on tenderly, taking her hand, ‘something has gone
+wrong with you, I am sure. Has your aunt been lecturing?’
+
+‘No. My father was unkind to me this morning; and I was weak enough to
+take his unkindness to heart; which I ought not to have done, being so
+well broken in to it.’
+
+‘And did you really and truly wish to go back to school?’
+
+‘I really and truly felt that I was an ignoramus, and that I had better
+go on with my education while I was young enough to learn.’
+
+‘Daphne, if you had all the knowledge of all the girls in Girton
+screwed into that little golden head of yours, you wouldn’t be one whit
+more charming than you are now.’
+
+‘I daresay the effect would be the other way; but I might be a great
+deal more useful. I might teach in a poor school, or nurse the sick, or
+do something in some way to help my fellow-creatures. But sculling, and
+billiard-playing, and lawn-tennis—isn’t it a horridly empty life?’
+
+‘If there were not birds and butterflies, and many bright useless
+things, this world wouldn’t be half so beautiful as it is, Daphne.’
+
+‘Oh, now you are dropping into poetry, like Mr. Wegg, and I must go
+to bed,’ she retorted, with good-humoured petulance, cheered by his
+kindness. ‘Good-night, Edgar. You are always good to me. I shall always
+like you,’ she said gently.
+
+‘Always like me. Yes, I hope so, Daphne. And do you still think that
+you would rather have had me than Gerald Goring for your brother?’
+
+‘Ten thousand times.’
+
+‘Yet he is a thoroughly amiable fellow, kind to everyone, generous to a
+fault.’
+
+‘A man with a million of money can’t be generous,’ answered Daphne; ‘he
+can never give anything that he wants for himself. Generosity means
+self-sacrifice, doesn’t it? It was generous of you to leave Hawksyard
+at six in the morning in order to teach me to scull.’
+
+‘I would do a great deal more than that to please you, and count it no
+sacrifice,’ said Edgar gravely.
+
+‘I am sure you would,’ answered Daphne, with easy frankness.
+
+She was so thoroughly convinced that he would never leave off caring
+for Madoline, and would go down to his grave fondly faithful to his
+first misplaced affection, that no word or tone or look of his, however
+significant, suggested to her any other feeling on his part than an
+honest brotherly regard for herself.
+
+‘Tell me what you think of Goring, now that you have had time to form
+an opinion about him.’
+
+‘I think that he is devoted to Lina, and that is all I want to know
+about him,’ answered Daphne decisively.
+
+‘And do you think him worthy of her?’
+
+‘Oh, that is a wide question. There was never a man living except King
+Arthur that I should think absolutely worthy of my sister Madoline; but
+as he is lying in Glastonbury Abbey, I think Mr. Goring will do as well
+as anyone else. I hope Lina will govern him, for his own sake as well
+as hers.’
+
+‘You think him weak, then?’
+
+‘I think him self-indulgent; and a self-indulgent man is always a weak
+man, isn’t he? Look at Gladstone now, a man of surpassing energy, of
+illimitable industry, a man who will eat a snack of cold beef and drink
+a glass of cold water for his luncheon, at his desk, in the midst of
+his work, anyhow. Mr. Lampton, the new member who went up to see him,
+gave us a sketch of him in his study, living so simply and working so
+hard, so thoroughly homely and unaffected.’
+
+‘Daphne, I thought you were a hardened little Tory!’
+
+‘So I am; but I can admire the individual though I may detest his
+politics. That is the kind of man I should like Lina to marry: a man
+without a selfish thought, a man made of iron.’
+
+‘Don’t you think a wife might hurt herself now and then against the
+rough edges of the iron? Those unselfish men are apt to demand a good
+deal of self-sacrifice from others.’
+
+‘And you think Lina was made to sit in a drawing-room all her life,
+among hot-house flowers. Well, I believe she will be very happy at
+Goring Abbey. She likes a quiet domestic life, and to live among the
+people she loves. And Mr. Goring’s selfishness will hardly trouble her.
+She has had such splendid training with papa.’
+
+‘Daphne, do you think it is quite right to speak of your father in that
+way?’ asked Edgar reproachfully.
+
+He was wounded by her flippant tone, hurt by every evidence of
+faultiness in one whom he hoped the future would develop into perfect
+woman and perfect wife.
+
+‘Would you like me to be a hypocrite?’
+
+‘No, Daphne. But if you can’t speak of Sir Vernon as he ought to be
+spoken of, don’t you think it would be better to say nothing at all?’
+
+‘For the future I shall be dumb, in deference to Mr. Turchill—and the
+proprieties. But it was nice to have one friend in the world with whom
+I could be thoroughly confidential,’ she added coaxingly.
+
+‘Pray be confidential with me.’
+
+‘I can’t, if you once begin to lecture. I have a horror of people who
+talk to me for my own good. That is Aunt Rhoda’s line. She is never
+tired of preaching to me for my good, and I never feel so utterly
+bad as I do after one of her preachments. And now I really must say
+good-night. Don’t forget that you are engaged to dine at the Rectory
+to-morrow.’
+
+‘Are not you and Lina going?’
+
+‘Yes, and Mr. Goring. It is to be a regular family gathering. Papa
+is asked, but I cherish a faint hope that he may not feel in the
+humour for going. I beg your pardon,’ exclaimed Daphne, making him a
+ceremonious curtsy. ‘My honoured parent has been invited, and wherever
+he is his children must be happy. Is that the kind of thing you like?’
+she asked tripping away to the little half-glass door at the other end
+of the terrace.
+
+Edgar ran after her to open the door for her; but she was fleet as
+Atalanta, and there was nobody to distract her with golden apples. She
+shut the door and drew the bolt, just as Edgar reached it, and nodded
+a smiling good-night to him through the glass. He stopped to see the
+white frock vanish from the lamp-lit lobby, and then turned away to
+light a cigarette and take a solitary turn on the terrace before going
+back to the drawing-room to make his adieux.
+
+It was a spot where a man might love to linger on such a night as this.
+The winding river, showing in fitful glimpses between its shadowy
+willows; the distant woods; the dim lights of the little quiet town;
+the tall spire rising above the trees; made up a landscape dearer to
+Edgar Turchill’s honest English heart than all the blue mountains and
+vine-clad valleys of the Sunny South. He was a son of the soil, with
+all his desires and prejudices and affections rooted in the land on
+which he had been born. ‘How sweet—how completely lovable she is,’
+he said to himself, meditating over that final cigarette, ‘and how
+thoroughly she trusts me! Her mind is as clear as a rivulet, through
+which one can count every pebble and every grain of golden sand.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+‘AND TO THE DINNER FASTE THEY HEM SPEDDE.’
+
+
+Mr. MacCloskie’s suggestions for new hot-houses at Goring Abbey were
+on so large a scale as to necessitate a good deal of consultation with
+architect and builder before the new constructions and alterations of
+existing structures were put in hand. The head gardener at South Hill
+had tried his hardest to secure the whole organisation and direction of
+the work for himself, and to have large powers in the choice of the men
+who were to carry it out.
+
+‘Ye’ll not need any architect, Mr. Goring, if ye’ll joost let me
+explain my mind to the builder,’ said this modest Caledonian.
+‘Architects know a deal about the Parthenon and the Temple of the
+Winds, and that kind of old-fashioned classical stuff, but there’s not
+one of ’em knows how to plan a good workable hot-house, or to build a
+flue that won’t smoke when the wind’s contrary. Architects are very
+good for the fronts of clubhouses and ceevil-service stores, and that
+like; but if you trust your new houses to an architect, I’ll give odds
+when they’re done there’ll be no place for me to put my coals. If
+you’ll just give me free scope——’
+
+‘You are very good, Mr. MacCloskie,’ answered Gerald with velvety
+softness, ‘but my father was a thoroughly practical man, and I believe
+he knew as much of the science of construction as any man living; yet
+he always employed an architect when he wanted anything built for
+himself, were it only a dustbin. I’ll stick to his lines.’
+
+‘Very well, sir, you must please yourself. But an orchid-house is a
+creetical thing to build. The outside of it may be as handsome as St.
+Peter’s at Rome; but your orchids won’t thrive unless they like the
+inside arrangements, and for them ye’ll want a practical man.’
+
+‘I’ll get a practical man, Mr. MacCloskie; you may be sure of that,’
+answered Gerald, ineffably calm, though the Scot was looking daggers.
+
+The morning before Mrs. Ferrers’s family dinner was devoted to the
+architect, who came down from London to Goring Abbey, expressly to
+advise and be instructed. He was entertained at luncheon at the Abbey;
+and Lina drove over under her aunt’s wing to meet him, while Gerald’s
+thoroughbred hack—a horse of such perfect manners that it mattered very
+little whether his rider had hands or no hands—ambled along the turfy
+borders of the pleasant country road beside the phaeton.
+
+Daphne had her day all to herself, since, knowing her to be alone at
+South Hill, Edgar had no excuse for going there; and, as Mr. Turchill
+argued with himself, a man must give some portion of his life to the
+dearest old mother and the most picturesque old house in the county.
+So, Edgar, with his fancies flying off and circling about South Hill,
+contrived to spend a moony day at home, mending his fishing-rods,
+reviewing his guns, writing a few letters, and going in and out of
+his mother’s homely old-fashioned morning-room twenty times between
+breakfast and luncheon.
+
+Mrs. Turchill had been invited to the family dinner at Arden Rectory,
+and had accepted the invitation, though she was not given to
+dissipation of any kind, and she and her son found a good deal to say
+about the coming feast during Edgar’s desultory droppings-in.
+
+‘I hope you’ll like her, mother,’ said Edgar, stopping, with a gun in
+one hand and an oily rag in the other, to look dreamily across the moat
+to the quiet meadows beyond, where the dark red Devon cows contrasted
+deliciously with the fresh green turf sprinkled with golden buttercups
+and silvery marguerites.
+
+‘Like her!’ echoed Mrs. Turchill, lifting her soft blue eyes in mild
+astonishment from her matronly task of darning one of the best damask
+table-cloths. ‘Why she is the sweetest girl I know. I would have given
+ten years of my life for you to have married her.’
+
+This was awkward for Edgar, who had spoken of Daphne, while Mrs.
+Turchill thought of Madoline.
+
+‘Not with my consent, mother,’ he said, laughing, and reddening as he
+laughed. ‘I couldn’t have spared a single year. But I wasn’t speaking
+of Madoline just then. I know of old how fond you are of her. I was
+talking of poor little Daphne, whom you haven’t seen since she came
+from her French school.’
+
+‘French school!’ exclaimed Mrs. Turchill contemptuously. ‘I hate the
+idea of those foreign schools, regular Jesuitical places, where they
+take girls to operas and theatres and give them fine notions,’ pursued
+the Saxon matron, whose ideas on the subject were slightly mixed. ‘Why
+couldn’t Sir Vernon send her to the Misses Tompion, at Leamington?
+That’s a respectable school if you like. Good evangelical principles,
+separate bedrooms, and plain English diet. I hope the French school
+hasn’t spoilt Daphne. She was a pretty little girl with bright hair, I
+remember, but she had rather wild ways. Something too much of a tomboy
+for my taste.’
+
+‘She was so young, mother, when you saw her last, not fifteen.’
+
+‘Well, I suppose French governesses have tamed her down, and that she’s
+pretty stiff and prim by this time,’ said Mrs. Turchill with chilling
+indifference.
+
+‘No, mother, she is a kind of girl whom no training would ever make
+conventional. She is thoroughly natural, original even, and doesn’t
+mind what she says.’
+
+‘That sounds as if she talked slang,’ said Mrs. Turchill, who, although
+the kindest of women in her conduct, could be severe of speech on
+occasion, ‘and of all things I detest slang in a woman. I hope she is
+industrious. The idleness of the young women of the present day is a
+crying sin.’
+
+Edgar Turchill seemed hardly to be aware of this last remark. He was
+polishing the gun-metal industriously with that horrible oily rag which
+accompanied him everywhere on his muddling mornings at home.
+
+‘She’s accomplished, I suppose,’ speculated Mrs. Turchill—‘plays, and
+sings, and paints on velvet.’
+
+‘Ye—es; that’s to say I’m not sure about the velvet,’ answered Edgar
+faintly, not remembering any special artistic performances of Daphne’s
+except certain attempts on a drawing-block, which had seemed to him too
+green and too cloudy to lead to much, and which he had never beheld in
+an advanced stage. ‘She is awfully fond of reading,’ he added in rather
+a spasmodic manner, after an interval of silent thought. ‘The poetry
+she knows would astonish you.’
+
+‘That would be easy,’ retorted Mrs. Turchill. ‘My father and mother
+didn’t approve of poetry, and Cowper, Thomson, and Kirke White were the
+only poets allowed to be read by us girls at old Miss Tompion’s—these
+ladies are nieces of my Miss Tompion, you know, Edgar.’
+
+‘How can I help knowing it, mother, when you’ve told me a hundred and
+fifty times?’ exclaimed her son, more impatiently than his wont.
+
+‘Well, Edgar, my dear, if you’re tired of my conversation—’
+
+‘No, you dear peppery old party, not a bit. Go on like an old dear as
+you are. Only I thought you were rather hard upon poor little Daphne
+just now.’
+
+‘How can I be hard upon her, when I haven’t seen her for the last three
+years! Dear, dear, what a small place Leamington was in my time,’
+pursued Mrs. Turchill, musing blandly upon the days of her youth; ‘but
+it was much more select. None of these rich people from Birmingham;
+none of these Londoners coming down to hunt; but a very superior
+class—invalids, elderly people who came to drink the waters, and to
+consult Doctor Jephson.’
+
+‘It must have been lively,’ murmured Edgar, not deeply interested.
+
+‘It was not lively, Edgar, but it was select,’ corrected Mrs. Turchill
+with dignity, as she paused with her head on one side to admire the
+neatness of her own work.
+
+She was the kindest and best of mothers, but Edgar felt on this
+particular occasion that she was rather stupid, and a trifle narrow in
+her ideas. A purely rustic life has its disadvantages, and a life which
+is one long procession of placid prosperous days, knowing little more
+variety than the change of the seasons, is apt to blunt the edge of the
+keenest intellect. Mrs. Turchill ought to have been more interested in
+Daphne, Edgar thought.
+
+‘She will be delighted with her when she sees her,’ he reasoned,
+comforting himself. ‘Who can help being charmed with a girl who is so
+thoroughly charming?’
+
+And then he took up his gun and his rag, and strolled away to another
+part of the roomy old house, so soberly and thoroughly old-fashioned,
+not with the gimcrack spurious old fashion of to-day, but with the
+grave ponderous realities of centuries ago—walls four feet thick,
+deeply-recessed windows, massive untrimmed joists, low ceilings,
+narrow passages, oak wainscoting, inconveniences and shortcomings
+of all kinds, but the subtle charm of the remote past, the romantic
+feeling of a house that has many histories, pervading everything.
+Edgar would not have changed Hawksyard and his three thousand a-year
+for Goring Abbey and a million. The house and the land around it—or at
+any rate the land—had belonged to his race from time immemorial, far
+back in the dim days of the Heptarchy. Tradition held that the first
+of the Turchills had been a sokeman who possessed a yard of land on
+the old feudal tenure, one of his obligations being that he should
+breed hawks for the king’s falconers, and thus the place had come
+in time to be called Hawksyard, long after the last hawk bred there
+had flown away to join some wild branch of the honey-buzzard family
+in the tree-tops of primeval Arden, and the yard of land had swelled
+into a very respectable manor. Edgar rather liked to believe that the
+founder of his race had been a sokeman, who had held thirty acres of
+land from the king at a penny an acre, and had furnished labourers for
+the royal harvest, and had ridden up and down the field with a wand in
+his hand to see that his men worked properly. This curious young man
+was as proud of Turchill the sokeman as of Turchill the high sheriff.
+If it was a humble origin its humility was of such ancient date that
+it became distinction. Turchill of the thirty acres was like Adam,
+or Paris, or David. In the long line of the Turchills whose bones
+were lying in the vaults below Hawksyard Church there had been men
+distinguished in the field, the Church, and the law; men who had fought
+on sea and land; men who had won power in the State, and used it well,
+true alike to king and commons. But the ruck of the Turchills had been
+country squires like Edgar, and Edgar’s father; men who farmed their
+own land and lived upon it, and who had no ambitions and few interests
+or desires beyond their native soil.
+
+Hawksyard was a real moated grange. The house formed three sides of a
+quadrangle, with a heavily buttressed garden wall for the fourth side.
+The water flowed all round the solid base of the building, a wide deep
+moat, well stocked with pike and eels, carp and roach. The square inner
+garden was a prim parterre of the seventeenth century, and there was
+not a flower grew there more modern than Lord Bacon’s day. This was a
+Turchill fancy. All the novelties of nineteenth-century horticulture
+might flourish in the spacious garden on the other side of the moat;
+but this little bit of ground within the gray old walls was a sacred
+enclosure, dedicated to the spirit of the past. Here the old yew-trees
+were clipped into peacocks. Here grew rosemary; lavender; periwinkle,
+white, purple, and blue; germander; flags; sweet marjoram; primroses;
+anemones; hyacinths; and the rare fritillaria; double white violets,
+which bloom in April, and again at Bartholomew-tide; gilliflowers;
+sweetbrier; and the musk-rose. Here the brazen sun-dial, on its
+crumbling stone pedestal, reminded the passer-by that no man is always
+wise. Here soft mosses, like tawny velvet, crept over the gray relics
+of an abbey that had been destroyed soon after the grange was built—the
+stone coffin of a mitred abbot; the crossed legs of a knightly
+crusader, with a headless heraldic dog at his feet. Here was the small
+circular fish-pond into which the last of the abbots was supposed to
+have pitched headforemost, and incontinently drowned himself, walking
+alone at midnight in a holy trance.
+
+Mrs. Turchill was almost as fond as Edgar was of Hawksyard; but her
+affection took a commonplace turn. She was not to the manner born.
+
+She had come to the grange from a smart nineteenth-century villa, and
+though she was very proud of the grave old house of which her husband
+had made her the mistress, her pride was mingled with an idea that
+Hawksyard was inconvenient, and that its old fashion was a thing to be
+apologised for and deprecated at every turn. Her chief delight was in
+keeping her house in order; and her servants were drilled to an almost
+impossible perfection in every duty appertaining to house-cleaning.
+Nobody’s brasses, or oak floors, or furniture, or family plate, or
+pewter dinner-service, ever looked so bright as Mrs. Turchill’s.
+Nowhere were windows so spotless; nowhere was linen so exquisitely
+white, or of such satin-like smoothness. Mrs. Turchill lived for these
+things. When she was in London, or at the sea-side, she would be
+miserable on rainy days at the idea that Jane or Mary would leave the
+windows open, and that the brass fenders and fire-irons were all going
+to ruin.
+
+Edgar spent a moony purposeless day, dawdling a good deal in the garden
+on the other side of the moat, where the long old-fashioned borders
+were full of tall white lilies and red moss-roses, vivid scarlet
+geranium, heliotrope and calceolaria, a feast of sweet scents and
+bright colours. There was a long and wide lawn without a flower bed on
+it—a level expanse of grass; and on the side opposite the flower border
+there was a row of good old mulberry and walnut trees; then came a
+light iron fence, and a stretch of meadow land beyond it. The grounds
+at Hawksyard made no pretence of being a park. There was not even a
+shrubbery, only that straight row of old trees, standing up out of the
+grass, with a gravel walk between them and the fence, across which
+Edgar used to feed and fondle his cows, or coax the shy brood mares and
+their foals to social intercourse.
+
+He looked round his domain doubtfully to-day, wondering if it were
+good enough for Daphne, this poor table-land of a garden, a flat lawn,
+a long old-fashioned border crammed with homely flowers, the yew-tree
+arbour at the end of yonder walk. How poor a thing it seemed after
+South Hill, with its picturesque timber and extensive view, its broad
+terrace and sloping lawn, its rich variety of shrubs and conifers!
+
+‘It isn’t because I am fond of the place that she would care for it,’
+he told himself despondently. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing romantic or
+striking about it—except the moat. I’m glad she’s so fond of water.’
+
+Edgar smoked a cigarette or two under the mulberry-trees, looked at his
+cows, talked to some of his men, and thus contrived to wear away the
+afternoon till the clock over the gateway struck five.
+
+‘Mother’s tea-time. I’ll go and have a cup with her,’ he said to
+himself.
+
+Going out to dinner was a tremendous piece of business with Mrs.
+Turchill. She was more serious and solemn about it than a strictly
+modern lady would feel about going to be married. Even in an
+instance of this kind, where the dinner was supposed to be entirely
+unceremonious, a friendly little gathering arranged on the spur of the
+moment, she was still full of fuss and preparation. She had spent an
+hour in her bed-chamber before luncheon, arranging and discussing with
+her maid Deborah what gown she would or would not wear on the occasion;
+and this discussion involved a taking out and unfolding of all her
+dinner-gowns, and an offering of divers laces upon divers bodices, to
+see which went best with which. A review of this kind generally ended
+by a decision in favour of black velvet, or satin, or silk, or brocade,
+as the case might be; Mrs. Turchill being much richer in gowns than in
+opportunities for wearing them.
+
+‘I always like myself best in black,’ she would say, with a glance at
+the reflection of her somewhat florid complexion in the Chippendale
+glass.
+
+‘You always look the lady in your velvet, mum,’ Deborah would answer
+sententiously.
+
+Then after a day of quiet usefulness about her house the worthy matron
+would collect her energies over a leisurely cup of tea, and perhaps
+allow herself the refreshment of a nap after her tea, before she began
+the solemn business of the toilet.
+
+The carriage had been ordered for a quarter past seven, though it was
+but half an hour’s drive to Arden Rectory, and at seven o’clock Mrs.
+Turchill was seated in the white parlour, in all the dignity of her
+velvet gown and point-lace cap, her hereditary amethysts, supposed to
+be second only to those once possessed by George the Third’s virtuous
+consort, and her scarlet and gold Indian shawl. She was a comely
+matron, with a complexion that had never been damaged by cark or
+care, gas or late hours: a rosy-faced country-bred dame, with bright
+blue eyes, white teeth, and plentiful brown hair, in which the silver
+threads were hardly visible.
+
+Edgar was standing by the open window, just where he had stood in the
+morning with his gun, sorely perplexed as to the disposal of those
+fifteen minutes which had to be got through before the most punctual of
+coachmen would bring the carriage to the door. The London papers were
+lying unheeded on the table; but Edgar had felt very little interest of
+late in the welfare of nations, or even in the last dreadful murder in
+Whitechapel.
+
+‘I hope my cap is right,’ said Mrs. Turchill anxiously.
+
+‘How could it be wrong, mother, when you’ve Deborah and your
+looking-glass, and have never been known to dress yourself in a hurry?’
+
+‘I dislike doing anything in a hurry, Edgar. It is against my
+principles. But I never feel sure about the set of my cap. I am
+afraid Deborah’s eye is not quite correct, and a glass is dreadfully
+deceiving. I wish you’d look, Edgar, if it isn’t too much trouble.’
+
+This was said reproachfully, as her son was kneeling on the window-seat
+staring idly down into the moat, as if he wanted to discover the
+whereabouts of an ancient pike that had evaded him last year.
+
+‘My dear mother,’ he exclaimed, turning himself about to survey her,
+‘to my eye—which may be no better than Deborah’s—that lace arrangement
+which you call a cap appears mathematically exact, as precise as your
+own straight, honest mind. There’s Dobson with the carriage. Come
+along, mother.’
+
+He led her out, established her comfortably in her own particular seat
+in the large landau, and seated himself opposite to her with a beaming
+countenance.
+
+‘How happy you look, Edgar!’ said Mrs. Turchill, wondering at this
+unusual radiance. ‘One would think it were a novelty for you to dine
+out. Yet I am sure,’ somewhat plaintively, ‘you don’t very often dine
+at home.’
+
+‘The Rectory dinners are not to be despised, mother.’
+
+‘Mrs. Ferrers is an excellent manager, and does everything very nicely;
+but as you don’t much care what you eat that would hardly make you so
+elated. I am rather surprised that you care about meeting Madoline and
+Mr. Goring so often,’ added Mrs. Turchill, who had not quite forgiven
+Lina for having refused to marry her son.
+
+That is the worst of making a confidante of a mother. She has an
+inconveniently long memory.
+
+‘I have nothing but kindly feelings for either of them,’ answered
+Edgar. ‘Don’t you know the old song, mother—“Shall I, wasting in
+despair, die because a woman’s fair?” I don’t look much like wasting in
+despair, do I, old lady?’
+
+‘I should be very sorry to see you unhappy, Edgar; but I shall never
+love any wife of yours as well as I could have loved Madoline.’
+
+‘Don’t say that, mother. That’s too hard on the future Mrs. Turchill.’
+
+This was a curious speech from a youth who six months ago had protested
+that he should never marry. But perhaps this was only Edgar’s fun. Mrs.
+Turchill shared the common delusion of mothers, and thought her son a
+particularly humorous young man.
+
+What a sweetly Arcadian retreat Arden Rectory looked on this fair
+summer evening, and how savoury was the odour of a _sole au gratin_
+which blended with the flowery perfumes of the low-panelled hall! The
+guests had wandered out through the window of the small drawing-room
+to the verandah and lawn in front of it. That long French window was a
+blot upon the architectural beauty of the half-timbered Tudor cottage,
+but it was very useful for circulation between drawing-room and garden.
+
+Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were sitting under the verandah; Daphne was
+standing a little way off on the lawn talking to the Rector and Gerald
+Goring. She was speaking with intense animation, her face full of
+brightness. Edgar darted off to join the group, directly he had shaken
+hands with the two ladies, leaving his mother to subside into one of
+those new-fangled bamboo chairs which she felt assured would leave its
+basket-work impression on her velvet gown.
+
+‘Edgar,’ cried Daphne as he came towards her, ‘did you ever hear of
+such a heathen—a man born on the soil—a very pagan?’
+
+‘Who is the culprit?’ asked Edgar; ‘and what has he done?’
+
+‘Mr. Goring has never seen Ann Hathaway’s cottage.’
+
+‘I don’t believe he knew who Ann Hathaway was till we told him,’ said
+the Rector, with his fat laugh.
+
+‘And he has ridden and driven through Shottery hundreds of times, and
+he never stopped to look at the cottage where Shakespeare—the most
+wonderful man in the whole world—wooed and won his wife.’
+
+‘I have heard it dimly suggested that she wooed and won him,’ remarked
+Gerald placidly; ‘she was old enough.’
+
+‘You are too horrid,’ cried Daphne. ‘Would you be surprised to hear
+that Americans cross the Atlantic—three thousand miles of winds and
+waves and sea-sickness—on purpose to see Stratford-on-Avon, and
+Shottery, and Wilmcote, and Snitterfield?’
+
+‘I could believe anything of a Yankee,’ answered Gerald, unmoved by
+these reproaches. ‘But why Wilmcote? why Snitterfield? They are as poky
+little settlements as you could find in any agricultural district.’
+
+‘Did you ever hear of such hideous ignorance?’ cried Daphne, ‘and in
+a son of the soil. You are most unworthy of the honour of having been
+raised in Shakespeare’s country. Why John Shakespeare was born at
+Snitterfield, and Mary Arden lived with her father at Wilmcote; and it
+was there he courted her.’
+
+‘John—Mary—oh, distant relations of the poet’s, I suppose?’ inquired
+Gerald easily.
+
+‘This is revolting,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘but he is shamming—he must be
+shamming.’
+
+‘Punish him for his ignorance, whether it is real or pretended,’ cried
+Edgar. ‘Make him row us all down to Stratford to-morrow morning; and
+then we’ll walk him over to Shottery, and make him give a new gown to
+the nice old woman who keeps the cottage.’
+
+‘A new gown,’ echoed Daphne contemptuously; ‘he ought to be made to
+give her a cow—a beautiful mouse-coloured Channel Island cow.’
+
+‘I’ll give her anything you like, as long as you don’t bore me to death
+about Shakespeare. I hate sights and lions of all kinds. I went through
+Frankfort without looking at the house where Goethe was born.’
+
+‘A depraved desire to be singular,’ said the Rector. ‘I think he ought
+to forfeit a cow to Mrs. Baker. Rhoda, my love,’ glancing furtively at
+his watch, ‘our friends are all here. Todd is usually more punctual.’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers, Lina, and Mrs. Turchill had strolled out to join the
+others. The prim rustic matron was looking at Daphne with astonishment
+rather than admiration. She was pretty, no doubt. Mrs. Turchill had
+never seen a more transparent complexion, or lovelier eyes; but there
+was a reckless vivacity about the girl’s manner which horrified the
+thoroughly British matron.
+
+‘Daphne,’ said Edgar, ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten my mother. Mother,
+this is Daphne.’
+
+Mrs. Turchill drew back a pace or two with extreme deliberation,
+and sank gracefully in the curtsy which she had been taught by the
+Leamington dancing-master—an undoubted Parisian—five-and-thirty years
+ago. After the curtsy she extended her hand and allowed Daphne to shake
+it.
+
+‘Come, Mrs. Turchill,’ said the Rector, offering his arm. ‘Goring,
+bring Miss Lawford; Turchill will take care of my wife; and Daphne’—he
+paused, smiling at the fair young face and slender girlish figure in
+soft white muslin—‘Daphne shall have my other arm, and sit on my left
+hand. I feel there is a bond of friendship between us now that I find
+she is so fond of Shakespeare.’
+
+‘I’m afraid I know Hamlet’s soliloquies better than I do my duty to my
+neighbour,’ said Daphne, on the way to the dining-room, remembering how
+the Rector used to glower at her under his heavy brows when she broke
+down in that portion of the Church Catechism.
+
+Mrs. Ferrers, from her opposite seat at the oval table, had a full view
+of her husband’s demeanour, across the roses and maidenhair ferns and
+old Derby crimson and purple dessert dishes. It was rather trying to
+her to see that he devoted himself entirely to Daphne during the pauses
+of the meal; and that, while he as in duty bound provided for all Mrs.
+Turchill’s corporeal needs, and was solicitous that she should do ample
+justice to his wines and his dishes, he allowed her mind to starve upon
+the merest scraps of speech dropped into her ear at long intervals.
+
+Nor was Edgar much better behaved to Mrs. Ferrers, for he sank into
+such a slough of despond at finding himself separated from Daphne,
+that his conversational sources ran suddenly dry, and Rhoda’s lively
+inquiries about the plays and pictures he had just been seeing elicited
+only the humiliating fact that she, who had not seen them, knew a great
+deal more about them than he who had.
+
+‘What did you think of the Millais landscape?’ she asked.
+
+‘Was there a landscape by Millais? I thought he was a portrait painter.’
+
+This looked hopeless, but she tried again.
+
+‘And Frith’s picture; you saw that of course.’
+
+‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, brightening; ‘but I saw the people looking
+at it. It was immensely good, I believe. There was a railing, and a
+policeman to make the people move on. My mother was delighted. She and
+another lady trod on each other’s gowns in their eagerness to get at
+the picture. I believe they would have come to blows, if it hadn’t been
+for the policeman.’
+
+‘And there was Miss Thompson’s picture.’
+
+‘Yes; and another crowd. That is the sort of picture mother enjoys. I
+think the harder the struggle is the better she likes the picture.’
+
+Gerald and Madoline were sitting side by side, talking as happily
+as if they had been in Eden. All the world might have heard their
+conversation—there were no secrets, there was no exchange of
+confidences—and yet they were as far away from the world about them,
+and as completely out of it, as if they had been in the planet Venus,
+rising so calmly yonder above the willows, and sending one tremulous
+arrow of light deep down into the dark brown river. For these two
+Mrs. Todd’s most careful achievements were as nothing. Her _sole
+au gratin_ might have been served with horse-radish sauce—or fried
+onions; her _vol-au-vent_ might have been as heavy as suet-pudding; her
+_blanquette_ might have been bill-sticker’s paste; her _soufflé_ might
+have been flavoured with peppermint instead of _vanille_; and they
+would hardly have discovered that anything was wrong.
+
+And what delight it was by-and-by to wander out into the cool garden,
+leaving the Rector to prose to poor Edgar over his Chambertin, and to
+lose themselves in the shadowy shrubbery, where the perfume of golden
+broom and mock orange seemed intensified by the darkness. Daphne sat
+in the quaint old candle-lit drawing-room conversing with the two
+matrons—Aunt Rhoda inclined to lecture; Mrs. Turchill inclined to
+sleepiness, having eaten a more elaborate dinner than she was used to,
+and feeling an uncomfortable tightness in the region of her velvet
+waistband.
+
+Edgar got away from the Rector as soon as he decently could, and came
+to the relief of the damsel.
+
+‘Well, mother, how are you and Daphne getting on?’ he asked cheerily.
+‘I hope you have made her promise to come to see you at Hawksyard.’
+
+Mrs. Turchill started from semi-somnolence, and her waistband gave a
+little creak.
+
+‘I shall be delighted if Madoline will bring her sister to call on
+me some day,’ she replied stiffly, addressing herself to nobody in
+particular.
+
+‘Call on you—some day! What an invitation!’ cried Edgar. ‘Why, mother,
+what has become of your old-fashioned hospitality? I want Daphne to
+come and stay with you, and to run about the house with you, and help
+you in your dairy and poultry-yard—and—get used to the place.’
+
+Get used to the place! Why should Daphne get used to the place? For
+what reason was a fair-haired chit in a white frock suddenly projected
+upon Mrs. Turchill’s cows and poultry—cows as sacred in her mind as
+if she had been a Hindoo; poultry which she only allowed the most
+trusted of her dependents to attend upon? She felt a sudden sinking of
+the heart, which was much worse than after-dinner tightness. Could it
+be that Edgar, her cherished Edgar, was going to throw himself away
+upon such a frivolous chit as this; a mere school-girl, without the
+slightest pretension to deportment?
+
+Daphne all this time sat in a low basket-chair by the open window, and
+looked up at Edgar with calm friendly eyes—eyes which were at least
+without guile when they looked at him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+‘AFTER MY MIGHT FUL FAYNE WOLD I YOU PLESE.’
+
+
+The day after the family dinner was hopelessly wet; so the expedition
+to Shottery, proposed by Edgar Turchill and seconded by Daphne, was
+indefinitely postponed. The summer fleeted by, the beautiful bounteous
+summer, with her lap full of sweet-scented flowers; the corn grew tall,
+the hay was being carted in many a meadow within sound of Stratford
+bells; and the woods began to put on that look of dull uniform green
+which indicates the beginning of the end. For the sisters at South
+Hill, for Gerald Goring and Edgar Turchill, July and August had been
+one long holiday. There was so little in life for these young people
+to do except take their pleasure. Theirs was an existence of perpetual
+rose-gathering; and the roses of life budded and bloomed for them with
+an inexhaustible fertility. Perhaps Madoline was the only one among
+them who had any idea of duty. Edgar was an affectionate son, a good
+master, and a liberal landlord, but he had never been called upon
+to sacrifice his own inclinations for the welfare of others, and he
+had never given his mind to any of the graver questions of the day.
+To him it mattered very little how the labouring classes as a body
+were taught and housed, so long as the peasants on his own land had
+decent cottages, and were strangers to want. It irked him not whether
+the mass of mankind were Jews or Gentiles, Ritualists, Dissenters,
+or rank unbelievers, so long as he sat in the old cloth-lined family
+pew on Sunday morning assisting at the same service which had been
+all-sufficient for his father, and seeing his dependents deporting
+themselves discreetly in their places in the gallery. His life was a
+narrow life, travelling in a narrow path that had been worn for him by
+the footsteps of his ancestors. He was a good man in a limited way.
+But he had never read the modern gospel, according to Thomas Carlyle,
+which after all is but an expansion of the Parable of the Talents:
+and he knew not that every man must work after some fashion or other,
+and do something for the time in which he lives. He was so thoroughly
+honest and true-hearted, that if the narrowness and uselessness of his
+life had been revealed to him, he would assuredly have girded his loins
+and taken up the pilgrim’s staff. Never having had any such revelation
+he took his pleasure as innocently as a school-boy at home for the
+holidays, and had no idea that he was open to the same reproach which
+that man received who had buried the wealth entrusted to him.
+
+He was as near happiness in this bright summer-tide as a mortal can
+hope to be. The greater part of his days were spent with Daphne, and
+Daphne was always delighted. True that she was changeable as the light
+July winds, and that there were times when she most unmercifully
+snubbed him. But to be snubbed by her was better than the smiles
+and blandishments of other women. She was given to that coyness and
+skittishness, the _grata protervitas_, which seems to have been the
+chief fascination of the professional beauty of the Augustan era.
+She was as coy as Chloe; coquettish as Glycera; fickle as Lydia,
+who, supposing there was only one lady of that name, and she a real
+personage, was rather too bad. Daphne was half-a-dozen girls is one;
+sometimes welcoming her swain so sweetly that he felt sure she loved
+him, and the next day turning from him with scornful impatience, as if
+his very presence were weariness to her.
+
+He bore it all. ‘Being her slave what could he do,’ etc. He had
+Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart, and was somewhat of the slavish lover
+therein depictured. His Lydia might flout him to-day, and he was just
+as ready to fetch and carry for her on the morrow. She had changed,
+and for the worse, since the sweet fresh early summer-tide when they
+two had breakfasted _tête-à-tête_ in the boat-house. She was not so
+even-tempered. She was ever so much more capricious and exacting; and
+she was prone to gloomy intervals which anyone other than a lover
+might have ascribed to sulks. Edgar wondered, not without sorrow, at
+the change; but it was not in him to blame her. He made all manner
+of excuses. Bad health was, perhaps, at the root of these discords.
+She might be a victim to obscure neuralgic pains and aches, which
+she heroically concealed from her friends—albeit her fair and fresh
+appearance belied the supposition. Perhaps it was the weather which
+made her occasionally cross. Who could go on in simpering placidity
+with the thermometer at ninety in the shade?
+
+‘And then we spoil her,’ argued Edgar, urging his final plea. ‘She is
+so bewitching that one can’t help spoiling her. Madoline spoils her. I
+am an idiot about her; and even Goring, for all his contemptuous airs
+and graces, is almost as easily fooled by her as the rest of us. If we
+were more rational in our treatment of her, she would be less faulty.
+But then her very faults are charming.’
+
+It had been, or had seemed to be, an utterly happy summer for everybody
+at South Hill. Two months of splendid weather; two months wasted
+in picnicking, and excursionising, driving, boating, lawn-tennis,
+tea-drinking, journeying to and fro between South Hill and Goring Abbey
+to watch the progress of the hot-houses, which, despite the unlimited
+means of their proprietor, progressed with a provoking slowness.
+
+For some little time after Gerald’s arrival Daphne had held herself as
+much as possible in the background. She had tried to keep aloof from
+the life of the two lovers; but this Madoline would not suffer.
+
+‘You are to be in all our amusements, and to hear all our plans, dear,’
+she told her sister one day. ‘I never meant that you and I should be
+less together, or less dear to each other, because of Gerald’s return.
+Do you think my heart is not big enough to hold you both?’
+
+‘I know it is, Lina. But I fancy Mr. Goring would like to have it all
+to himself, and would soon get to look upon me as an intruder, if I
+were too much with you. You had better leave me at home to amuse myself
+on the river, or to play ball with Goldie, who is more than a person
+as to sense and sensibility.’
+
+To this Madoline would not consent. Her love of her sister was so
+tempered with pity, so chastened and softened by her knowledge of the
+shadow that darkened the beginning of Daphne’s life, that it was much
+deeper and stronger than the affection common among sisters. She wanted
+to make up to Daphne for all she had lost; for the cruel mother who had
+deserted her in her cradle; for the father’s unjust resentment. And
+then there was the delightful idea that Edgar Turchill, that second
+best of men, whom she had rejected as a husband, would by-and-by be
+her brother; and that Daphne’s future, sheltered and cherished by a
+good man’s devoted love, would be as complete and perfect a life as
+the fairest and sweetest of women need desire to live. Madoline had
+quite made up her mind that Edgar was to marry Daphne. That he was
+passionately in love with her was obvious to the meanest capacity.
+Everybody at South Hill knew it except perhaps Daphne herself. That
+she liked him with placid sisterly regard was equally clear. And who
+could doubt that time would ripen this sisterly regard into that warmer
+feeling which could alone recompense him for his devotion? Thus,
+against the girl’s own better sense, it became an understood fact that
+Daphne was to be a third in all the lovers’ amusements and occupations,
+and that Mr. Turchill was very frequently to make a fourth in the same.
+To Gerald Goring the presence of these two seemed in no wise obnoxious.
+Daphne’s vivacity amused him, and he looked upon his old friend
+Turchill as a considerably inferior order of being, not altogether
+unamusing after his kind. He was not an exacting lover. He accepted his
+bliss as a settled thing; he knew that no rock on Cornwall’s rugged
+coast was more securely based than his hold on Madoline’s affection. He
+was troubled by no jealous doubts; his love knew no hot fits or cold
+fits, no quarrelling for the after bliss of reconciliation. There was
+nothing of the _grata protervitas_ in Madoline’s gentle nature. Her
+well-balanced mind could not have stooped to coquetry.
+
+August was drawing to its close. It had been a month of glorious
+weather, such halcyon days as made the farmer’s occupation seem just
+the most delightful calling possible for man. There was not much arable
+land within ken of South Hill, but what cornfields there were promised
+abundant crops; and one of the magnates of the land—who, in his dudgeon
+against a revolutionary re-adjustment of the game-laws at that time
+looming in the dim future, had rough-ploughed a thousand acres or so of
+his best land rather than let it under obnoxious conditions—may have
+thought regretfully of the corn that might have been reaped off those
+breezy uplands and in those fertile valleys, where at his bidding
+sprang cockle instead of barley. It was a month of holiday-making
+for everybody—for even the labour of the fields, looked at from the
+outside, seemed like holiday-making. Quiet little Stratford, flushed
+with spasmodic life by the arrival of a corps of artillery, tootled on
+trumpets, and daddy-mammyed on drums; while the horn of the Leamington
+coach blew lustily every morning and afternoon, and the foxhound puppy
+at nurse at The Red Horse found the middle of the highway no longer
+a comfortable place for his after-dinner nap. It was the season of
+American tourists, doing Stratford and its environs, guide-book in
+hand, and crowding in to The Red Horse parlour, after luncheon, to see
+the veritable chair in which Washington Irving used to sit.
+
+There came a drowsy sunny noontide when the lovers had no particular
+employment for their day. They had been reduced to playing billiards
+directly after breakfast, until Gerald discovered that it was too warm
+for billiards, whereupon the four players—Lina, Daphne, Gerald, and
+Turchill—repaired to the garden in search of shade.
+
+‘Shade!’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘Who wants shade? Who could ever
+have too much of Phœbus Apollo? Not I. We see too little of his godlike
+countenance, and I will never turn my back upon him.’
+
+She seated herself on the burnt grass in the full blaze of the sun,
+while the other three sat in the shadow of an immense Spanish chestnut,
+which grew wide and low, making a leafy tent.
+
+‘This is a horrid idle way of spending one’s day,’ said Daphne, jumping
+up with sudden impatience, after they had all sat for half an hour
+talking lazily of the weather and their neighbours. ‘Is there nothing
+for us to do?’
+
+‘Yes, you excitable young person,’ answered Gerald; ‘since your
+restless temper won’t let us be comfortable here, we’ll make you exert
+yourself elsewhere. The river is the only place where life can be
+tolerable upon such a day as this. The nicest thing would be to be in
+it: the next best thing perhaps is to be on it. You shall row us to
+Stratford Weir, Miss Daphne.’
+
+‘I should like it of all things. I am dying for something to do,’
+responded Daphne, brightening. ‘You’ll take an oar, won’t you, Edgar?’
+
+‘Of course, if you’d really like to go. By-the-by, suppose we improve
+the occasion by landing at Stratford, and walking Gerald over to
+Shottery to see Ann Hathaway’s cottage.’
+
+‘Delicious,’ cried Daphne. ‘It shall be a regular Shakespearian
+pilgrimage. We’ll take tea and things, and have kettledrum in Mrs.
+Baker’s house-place. She’ll let me do what I like, I know. And Mr.
+Goring shall carry the basket, as a punishment for his hideous apathy.
+And we’ll talk to him about Shakespeare’s early life all the way.’
+
+‘Shakespeare’s life, forsooth!’ cried Gerald scornfully. ‘Who is
+there that knows anything about it? Half-a-dozen entries in a parish
+register; a few traditional sayings of Ben Jonson’s; and a pack
+of sentimentalists—English and German—evolve out of their inner
+consciousness a sentimental biography. “We may picture him as a youth
+going across the fields to Shottery: because it is the shortest way,
+and a man of his Titanic mind would naturally have taken it: yes, over
+the same meadows we tread this day: on the same ground, if not actually
+on the same grass.” Or again: “Seeing that Apostle-spoons were still
+in common use in the reign of Elizabeth, it may be fairly concluded
+that the immortal poet used one for his bread and treacle: for who
+shall affirm that he did not eat bread and treacle, that the inspired
+lad of the Stratford grammar-school had not the same weaknesses and
+boyish affections as his schoolmates? Who would not love to possess
+Shakespeare’s spoon, or to eat out of Shakespeare’s porringer?” That is
+the kind of rot which clever men write about Shakespeare: and I think
+it is because I have been overdosed with such stuff that I have learned
+to detest the bard in his private character.’
+
+‘You are a hardened infidel, and you shall certainly carry the basket.’
+
+‘What, madam, would you degrade me to a hireling’s office? “Gregory, o’
+my word, we’ll not carry coals.”’
+
+‘There, you see,’ cried Daphne triumphantly, ‘you can’t live without
+quoting him. He has interwoven himself with our daily speech.’
+
+‘Because we are parrots, without ideas of our own,’ answered Gerald.
+
+‘Oh, I am proud of belonging to the soil on which he was reared. I
+wish there was one drop of his blood in my veins. I envy Edgar because
+his remote ancestry claim kin with the Ardens. I almost wish I were a
+Turchill.’
+
+‘That would be so easy to accomplish,’ said Edgar softly, blushing at
+his own audacity.
+
+Daphne noticed neither his speech nor his confusion. She was all
+excitement at the idea of an adventurous afternoon, were it only a
+visit to the familiar cottage.
+
+‘Madoline, dearest, may I order them to pack us a really nice tea?’ she
+asked.
+
+‘Yes, dear, if we are all decided upon going.’
+
+‘It seems to me that the whole thing has been decided for us,’ said
+Gerald, smiling indulgently at the vivacious face, radiant in the broad
+noonday light, the willowy figure in a white gown flecked and chequered
+with sunshine.
+
+‘You order me to row you down the Avon,’ said Daphne, ‘and I condemn
+you to a penitential walk to Shottery. You ought by rights to go
+barefoot, dressed in a white sheet; only I don’t think it would become
+you.’
+
+‘It might be too suggestive of the Turkish bath,’ said Gerald. ‘Well,
+I submit, and if needs be I’ll carry the basket, provided you don’t
+plague me too much about your poet.’
+
+‘I move an amendment,’ interposed Edgar. ‘Sir Vernon is to take the
+chair at Warwick at the Yeomanry dinner, so Miss Lawford is off
+duty. Let us all go on to Hawksyard and dine with the old mother.
+It’ll delight her, and it won’t be half bad fun for us. There’ll be
+the harvest moon to light you home, Madoline, and the drive will be
+delicious in the cool of the——’
+
+‘Cockchafers,’ cried Gerald. ‘They are particularly cool at that
+hour—come banging against one’s nose with ineffable assurance.’
+
+‘Say you’ll come, Lina,’ pleaded Edgar, ‘and I’ll send one of Sir
+Vernon’s stable-boys to Hawksyard on my horse with a line to the mater,
+if I may.’
+
+‘I should enjoy it immensely—if Gerald likes, and if you are sure Mrs.
+Turchill would like to have us.’
+
+‘I think I’d better be out of it. I’m not a favourite with Mrs.
+Turchill,’ said Daphne bluntly.
+
+‘Oh, Daphne!’ cried Turchill ruefully.
+
+‘Oh, Edgar!’ cried Daphne, mocking him. ‘Can you lay your hand upon
+your heart, and declare, as an honest man, that your mother likes me?’
+
+‘Perhaps not quite so much as she will when she knows more of you,’
+answers the Squire of Hawksyard, as red as a turkey-cock. ‘The fact is,
+she so worships Madoline that you are a little thrown into the shade.’
+
+‘Of course. How could anyone who likes Madoline care about me? It isn’t
+possible,’ retorted Daphne, with a somewhat bitter laugh. ‘If I were
+one of a boisterous brood of underbred girls I might have a chance
+of being considered just endurable; but as Lina’s sister I am as the
+shadow to the sunlight; I am like the back of a beautiful picture—a
+square of dirty canvas.’
+
+‘If you are fishing for compliments, you are wasting trouble,’ said
+Gerald. ‘It is not a day on which any man will rack his brains in the
+composition of pretty speeches.’
+
+‘May I write the note? May I send the boy?’ asked Edgar.
+
+Lina looked at her lover, and finding him consentient, consented;
+whereupon Edgar hurried off, intensely pleased, to make his
+arrangements.
+
+So far, he had been disappointed in the hope of seeing Daphne a
+frequent guest at Hawksyard, the petted companion and plaything of his
+mother. He had made for himself an almost Arcadian picture: Daphne
+basking on the stone bench in the Baconian garden; amusing herself with
+the poultry; even milking a cow on occasion; and making junkets in the
+picturesque old dairy. He had fancied her upstairs and downstairs,
+in my lady’s chamber; unearthing all Mrs. Turchill’s long-hoarded
+treasures of laces and ribbons, kept to be looked at rather than to be
+worn; sorting the house-linen, which would have stocked a Swiss hotel,
+and which ran the risk of perishing by slow decay upon its shelves or
+ever it was worn by usage. He had pictured her accepted as the daughter
+of the house; waking the solemn old echoes with her glad young voice;
+fondling his dogs; riding his hunters in the green lanes, and across
+the level fields. She was pining to ride; but of the six horses at
+South Hill there was not one which Sir Vernon would allow her to mount.
+
+The pleasant picture was as yet only a phantasm of the mind. Mrs.
+Turchill had not yet taken to Daphne. She was a good woman—truthful,
+honest, kindhearted—but she had her prejudices, and was passing
+obstinate.
+
+‘I don’t deny her prettiness,’ she said, when Edgar tried to convince
+her that not to admire Daphne was a fault in herself, ‘but she is not a
+girl that I could ever make a friend of.’
+
+‘That’s because you don’t take the trouble to know her, mother. If you
+would ask her here oftener——’
+
+‘I hope I know my place, Edgar,’ said the mistress of the Grange
+stiffly. ‘If Miss Daphne Lawford wishes to improve my acquaintance she
+knows where to find me.’
+
+But Daphne had taken no pains to secure to herself the advantages
+of Mrs. Turchill’s friendship. There was no particular reason why
+she should go to Hawksyard: so, after one solemn afternoon call with
+Madoline—on which occasion they were received with chilling formality
+in the best drawing-room: an apartment with an eight-foot oak dado,
+deeply-recessed mullioned windows, and a state bedroom adjoining—Daphne
+went there no more. And now here was a splendid opportunity of
+making her at home in the dear old house, and of showing her all the
+surroundings which its master loved and cherished.
+
+ ‘BEST OF MOTHERS,’ wrote Edgar, ‘I am going to take you by storm this
+ afternoon. We—Lina, Daphne, Mr. Goring, and I—are going to Shottery,
+ and propose driving on to Hawksyard afterwards. Get up the best dinner
+ you can at so short a notice, and give us your warmest welcome. You
+ had better put out some of Hirsch’s Liebfraumilch and a little dry
+ cham. for Goring. The girls drink only water. Let there be syllabubs
+ and junkets and everything pastoral. Don’t ask anyone to meet them,’
+ added Edgar, with a dread of having the local parson projected on
+ his love-feast; ‘we want a jolly, free-and-easy evening. Dinner at
+ eight.—Your loving
+
+  TED.’
+
+This brief epistle was handed to Mrs. Turchill just as she was sitting
+down to luncheon. Her first idea was to strike. Her son might have
+brought home half-a-dozen of his bachelor friends, and it would have
+been a pleasure to her to kill fatted calves and put out expensive
+wines. She would have racked her brain to produce an attractive _menu_,
+and taxed the resources of poultry-yard and dairy to the uttermost.
+But to be bidden to prepare a feast for Madoline, who had rejected her
+paragon son, for the rival who had supplanted him, and for Daphne,
+whom she most cordially disliked, was something too much. She sat at
+her simple meal bridling and murmuring to herself in subdued revolt.
+She was tempted to ring for Deborah and confide her wrongs to that
+sympathetic ear; but discretion and her very genuine love for her son
+prevailed; and instead of summoning Deborah, she sent for the cook, and
+announced the dinner party as cheerfully as if it were the fulfilment
+of a long-cherished desire.
+
+Daphne ran down to the boat-house before the others had finished
+luncheon, and with Bink’s assistance made her boat a picture of
+comfort. Gerald was excused from the burden of the basket, as that
+could be conveyed in the carriage which was to pick up the party at
+Shottery and take them on to Hawksyard. The old name of the boat had
+been erased for ever by workmanlike hands the day after Daphne’s futile
+attempt to obliterate it. ‘Nora Creina’ now appeared in fresh gilding
+above the deposed emperor.
+
+‘You ought not to have altered it,’ said Gerald. ‘There was something
+original in calling your boat after a bloodthirsty lunatic. “Nora
+Creina” is the essence of Cockneyism.’
+
+‘It was the boat-builder’s suggestion,’ Daphne answered indifferently.
+‘What’s in a name?’
+
+‘True! Your boat by any other name would go as fast.’
+
+Daphne had to wait some time by the water’s edge before the other three
+came quietly strolling across the meadow. She had been sculling gently
+up and down under the willows while she waited.
+
+‘Now then, Empress,’ said Gerald, when he had arranged Lina’s shawls,
+and settled her comfortably in her place, ‘you are to sit beside your
+sister. Edgar and I will take an oar apiece, while you and Lina amuse
+ur conversation.’
+
+This nickname of Empress was a reminiscence of Daphne’s adventure
+in Fontainebleau Forest. It matched very well with her occasional
+imperiousness, and the association was known only to Gerald Goring and
+herself. It amused him when he was in a mischievous humour to call her
+by a name which she never heard without a blush.
+
+‘I thought I was to row you,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘No, Empress; as it’s all down stream we of the sterner sex will
+relieve you of the duty. Besides, you could never row comfortably
+in that go-to-meeting get-up,’ said Gerald, looking critically at
+Daphne’s straw-coloured Indian silk, embroidered with scarlet poppies
+and amber wheat-ears, and fluffy with soft lace about the neck and
+arms, and the Swiss milkmaid’s hat with its wreath of cornflowers.
+
+‘I could not wear a boating-dress, as we are to dine with Mrs.
+Turchill,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘You might have worn what you liked,’ protested Edgar eagerly, ‘but
+you look so lovely in that yellow gown that I shall be pleased for my
+mother to see you in it. She is weak about gowns. I believe she has a
+wardrobe full of gorgeous attire, which she and Deborah review once a
+week, but which nobody ever wears.’
+
+‘The gowns will do for the chair-covers of a future generation,’ said
+Gerald; ‘all the chair-covers in my mother’s morning-room are made out
+of the Court trains of her grandmothers and great-aunts. I believe a
+Court mantle in those days consumed two yards and a half of stuff.’
+
+He had taken off his coat, and bared his arms to above the elbow.
+
+‘What a splendid stroke you pull still, Goring!’ said Edgar admiringly,
+‘and you have the wrist of a navvy.’
+
+‘One of my paternal inheritances,’ answered Gerald coolly; ‘you know my
+father was a navvy.’
+
+At which frank speech everybody in the boat blushed except the speaker.
+
+‘He must have been a glorious fellow,’ faltered Edgar, after an awkward
+pause.
+
+‘Any man who can make a million of money, and keep it without leaving
+speck or flaw upon his good name, must be a glorious fellow,’ answered
+Gerald, with more heartiness than was usual to him. ‘My father lived
+to do good to others as well as to himself, and went down to his grave
+honoured and beloved. I wish I were more like him.’
+
+‘That’s the nicest thing I ever heard you say,’ exclaimed Daphne.
+
+‘Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley——,’ murmured Gerald; ‘I am
+beginning to feel proud of myself.’
+
+They landed at the boat-builder’s below the bridge, hard by that
+decayed old inn which must have seen courtlier company than the
+waggoners and wayfarers who drink there now. Then they crossed Sir Hugh
+Clopton’s granite bridge, and walked through the quiet town to the
+meadows that lead to Shottery. It is but a mile from the town to the
+village, a mile of meadow pathway, every step of which is haunted by
+ghostly footsteps—the Sacred Way of English literature.
+
+‘It’s no use telling me not to talk about him,’ cried Daphne, as she
+jumped lightly from the top of a stile, the ascent whereof tested the
+capacity of a fashionable frock; ‘I cannot tread this ground without
+thinking of him. I am positively bursting with the idea of him.’
+
+‘Which is the fortunate he whose image haunts you?’ asked Gerald, with
+that languid upward twitch of his dark brows which gracefully expressed
+a mild drawing-room cynicism. ‘Do these fields suggest grave thoughts
+about tenant-right or game-laws, or the land question generally? Is it
+Beaconsfield or Gladstone whose _eidolon_ pursues you?’
+
+‘Please don’t be disgusting,’ cried Daphne. ‘_Can_ one think of anybody
+in these meadows except——’
+
+‘The inevitable William. A man does not live near Stratford with
+impunity. He must be dosed. Well, child, what are you bursting to say?’
+
+‘I have been thinking what a happiness it is to know that the dear
+creature travelled so little,’ responded Daphne; ‘and that whether he
+talks of Bohemia, or France, or Germany, Rome, Verona, Elsinore, or
+Inverness——’
+
+‘Somebody wrote a treatise an inch thick to show that Shakespeare may
+have gone to Scotland with the king’s players, but I fancy he left his
+case as hypothetical as he found it,’ interjected Gerald.
+
+‘Whether he talks of Athens—or Africa—he really means Warwickshire,’
+pursued Daphne. ‘It is his own native county that is always present to
+his mind. Florizel and Perdita make love in our meadows. There is the
+catalogue of flowers just as they bloom to-day. And Rosalind’s cottage
+was in a lane near the few old oaks which still remain to show where
+Arden Forest once stood. And poor Ophelia drowned herself in one of the
+backwaters of our Avon. I can show you the very willow growing aslant
+the brook.’
+
+‘A backwater isn’t a brook,’ murmured Edgar mildly.
+
+‘I allow that local colour is not our William’s strong point,’ answered
+Gerald. ‘Not being a traveller, he would have done better had he never
+ventured beyond the limits of his Warwickshire experience; for in that
+case he would not have imagined lions in the streets of Rome, or a
+sea-coast in Bohemia.’
+
+‘Wait till you write a play or a novel,’ retorted Daphne, ‘and you’ll
+find you’ll have to adapt yourself to circumstances.’
+
+‘That’s exactly what your divine bard did not do. He adapted
+circumstances to suit his plays.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+‘LOVE IS A THING, AS ANY SPIRIT, FREE.’
+
+
+Past a garden or two and a few cottages; a long garden wail with heavy
+coping, shutting in treasures of fruit and vegetables; an old inn; a
+new school-house, built at the corner of a lane shaded by as stately
+an avenue of elms as any nobleman need desire for the approach to his
+mansion. And yet mansion there is none at the end of this verdant
+aisle. The lane is only an accommodation road leading to somebody’s
+farm. A youthful monitor is trying to drill some small boys in front
+of the school-porch, and the small boys are defying him; whereat a
+shrill-voiced woman, unseen in the interior of the school, calls out an
+occasional word of reproof. All the houses in the little village belong
+to the past—they have the grace of a day that is dead. In a farm garden
+a buxom servant in a kilted petticoat is feeding a family of gigantic
+hens and chickens with something thick and slab out of an iron pot.
+
+Daphne and her companions felt that there could have been little change
+since the old romantic Elizabethan time. The village lay off the beaten
+tracks. Three or four modern houses, scattered about here and there in
+spacious gardens, were the only addition time had made to Shottery.
+
+They walked briskly along the narrow road, across the bridge where
+the shallow streamlet came tumbling picturesquely over gray stones.
+Then a few paces, and before them stood the little block of cottages
+which genius has transformed into a temple. Whether the building was
+originally one house, it were difficult to decide. The levels are
+different; but a variety in levels was the order of that day. The whole
+block is a timber-framed structure—a panelled house, the panels filled
+with dab and wattle. Jutting casements, diamond-paned, look out upon an
+ancient garden, and an ancient well. Beside the house and garden there
+is an old orchard, where on this day a couple of sheep are placidly
+nibbling the sweet grass. The cottage is almost smothered in greenery.
+Honeysuckle, jasmine, roses, hang about the walls as if they loved
+them. The old timber porch is curtained with flowers.
+
+The South Hill carriage was waiting in the lane when Daphne and her
+companions arrived. The basket had been duly delivered over to Mrs.
+Baker. She was standing at the door awaiting them with a smiling
+welcome.
+
+‘So glad to see you, ladies. The kettle’s on the boil, and you can have
+your tea as soon as you please.’
+
+‘Thanks, you dear thing,’ cried Daphne; ‘but isn’t it almost sacrilege
+to drink tea in his room?’
+
+‘It isn’t everybody I’d let do it, miss; not any of those Americans;
+though I must say they’re uncommonly civil, and know more about
+Shakespeare than the common run of English do, and are more liberal
+in their ways too,’ added Mrs. Baker, with a lively remembrance of
+half-crowns from Transatlantic visitors.
+
+‘Mrs. Baker,’ began Daphne in a solemn tone, laying a little
+tawny-gloved hand lightly on the collar of Gerald’s coat, ‘you see this
+man?’
+
+‘Yes, miss, and a very nice-looking gentleman he is for anybody to look
+at,’ answered Mrs. Baker smirkingly, making up her mind that the tall
+dark-eyed gentleman must belong to one or other of the two young ladies.
+
+‘He may be nice to the outward eye,’ said Daphne gravely, ‘but he is
+dust and ashes inside. He is anathema maranatha, or he ought to be, if
+there were anybody in Warwickshire who knew how to anathematise him
+properly. He lives in this county—within twelve miles of this house—and
+he has never been to see the ingle-nook where Shakespeare courted his
+wife. I’m afraid it won’t make the faintest impression upon his callous
+mind when I tell him that you are a lineal descendant of the Hathaways,
+and that this house has never been out of a Hathaway’s possession since
+Shakespeare’s time.’
+
+‘I appreciate the lady for her own sake, and don’t care a jot for her
+ancestry,’ answered Gerald, with a friendly air.
+
+They followed Mrs. Baker into the house-place, where all was cool
+and shadowy after the glare of sunshine outside. It was a low but
+somewhat spacious room, with casements looking back and front; recessed
+casements, furnished with oaken seats, one of which was known as
+the lovers’ seat; for here, the lovers of the present day argued by
+analogy, William and Ann must have sat to watch many a sunset, and many
+a moonlit sky. Here they must have whispered their foolish lovers’ talk
+in the twilight, and shyly kissed at parting. The fire-place was in a
+deep recess, a roomy ingle-nook where half-a-dozen people could have
+gathered comfortably round the broad open hearth. On one side of the
+ingle-nook was a cupboard in the wall, known as the bacon-cupboard; on
+the other the high-backed settle. Opposite the fire-place there was
+a noble old dresser—polished oak or mahogany—with turned legs and a
+good deal of elaborate carpentry: a dresser which was supposed to be
+Elizabethan, but which was suggestive rather of the Carolian period.
+The dark brown panels made an effective background for an old willow
+dinner-service.
+
+Daphne made Mr. Goring explore every inch of the house which Mrs.
+Baker was able conveniently to show. She led him up a breakneck little
+staircase, showed him lintels and doorposts, and locks and bolts,
+which had been extant in Shakespeare’s time; made him admire the queer
+little carved four-poster which was even older than the poet’s epoch;
+and the old fine linen sheet, richly worked by patient fingers, which
+had been in the family for centuries, only used at a birth or a death.
+She excused him from nothing; and he bore the infliction with calm
+resignation, and allowed her to lead him back to the house-place in
+triumph.
+
+Madoline and Edgar Turchill were sitting in the lovers’ seat, talking,
+after having unpacked the basket, and made all preparation for tea,
+assisted by Mrs. Baker’s modest handmaiden.
+
+‘Now, Mr. Goring,’ said Daphne, when she and Gerald and the old lady
+had rejoined the others, ‘how do you feel about that Channel Island
+cow?’
+
+‘Oh, I am content,’ answered Gerald, laughing at her. ‘I submit to the
+extortion; you carry matters with such a high hand that if you were to
+demand all my flocks and herds I should hardly feel surprised.’
+
+‘Mrs. Baker,’ said Daphne, with a businesslike air, ‘this gentleman is
+going to give you a cow.’
+
+‘Oh, miss, you don’t mean it, surely!’ murmured Mrs. Baker, overcome
+with confusion.
+
+‘Yes; a lovely fawn-coloured, hazel-eyed Alderney. Don’t refuse
+her. He can as well afford to give you a cow as I can to give you
+a neck-ribbon. When would you like the animal sent home? To-morrow
+morning? Yes, of course; to-morrow morning. You hear, Mr. Goring?
+And now you may consider yourself forgiven, and I’ll show you the
+visitors’-book and all the interesting autographs.’
+
+They went over to the table near the window, and turned the leaves of
+that volume! Alas! how many a hand that had written in it was now dust.
+Here was the signature of Charles Dickens, nearly thirty years old, and
+pale with age. But the descendant of the Hathaways remembered the day
+when it was written, and recalled the visit with pride.
+
+‘He took the book out into the garden, and sat on the stone slab over
+the well to write his name,’ she said. ‘I remember how full of life and
+fun he and Mr. Mark Lemon were; he was laughing as he wrote, and he
+looked at everything, and was so pleased and so pleasant.’
+
+Sir Walter Scott’s name was in an older book. Both of these were
+as dead—and as undying—as Shakespeare. And compared with these two
+immortal names all the rest of the signatures in the big book were zero.
+
+It was the merriest tea-party imaginable. Mrs. Baker’s best Pembroke
+table had been brought into the middle of the room; her best teapot
+and cups and saucers were set out upon it. Cakes and hot-house
+fruit had been liberally supplied by Mrs. Spicer. Daphne whispered
+in her sister’s ear a request that Mrs. Baker might be invited to
+join them, to which Madoline nodded a smiling assent. Was not the
+descendant of the Hathaways a lady by right of her gentle manners and
+ancient descent? She belonged to a class that is an honour to the
+land—the honest independent yeoman who tills the soil his forefathers
+cultivated before him. The birth and death sheet in the oak chest
+upstairs was like a patent of nobility. And yet perhaps not one of
+these agricultural Hathaways had ever enjoyed as large an income as a
+first-class mechanic in a manufacturing town—a man who dies and leaves
+not a rap behind him to show that he was once respectable. They had
+been upheld in their places by the pride of race, which the mechanic
+knows not.
+
+Mrs. Baker was installed in the place of honour in front of the
+tea-tray, and asked everyone in her nice old-fashioned way whether
+their tea was to their liking. Upon being coaxed to talk she told
+stories about the defunct Hathaways, and explained how the house that
+had once been all one dwelling-place had come to be divided.
+
+It was Daphne and she who supplied the conversation. The two young men
+looked on amused; Edgar openly admiring the bright changeful face under
+the little Swiss hat. Lina was pleased that her sister should be so
+innocently glad.
+
+‘O, how happy I am,’ cried Daphne suddenly, in a pause of the talk,
+clasping her hands above her head in a kind of ecstasy. ‘If it could
+only last!’
+
+‘Why should it not last?’ asked Edgar, in his matter-of-fact way.
+
+Gerald looked at her gravely, with a puzzled look. Yes; this was
+the girl who had stood in the dazzling sunshine beside the lake at
+Fontainebleau, in whose hand he had read the forecast of an evil fate.
+
+‘God help her!’ he thought, ‘she is so impulsive—such a creature of the
+moment. How is such an one to travel safely through the thorny ways of
+life? Happily there seems little fear of thorniness for her footsteps.
+Here is my honest Turchill dying for her—and just the kind of man to
+make her an excellent husband, and give the lie to palmistry. Yet it
+seems a common place fate; almost as vulgar as the Italian warehouse in
+Oxford Street.’
+
+He sat musing thus in the lazy afternoon atmosphere, and watching
+Daphne with something of an artistic rather than an actually friendly
+interest. It seemed a shallow nature that must be always expressing
+itself in speech or movement. There could be no depth of thought allied
+with such vivacity—keenness of feeling, perhaps, but for the moment
+only.
+
+Nobody was in a hurry to leave the cottage. Tea-drinking is of all
+sensualities the most intellectual. The mind is refreshed rather than
+the body. There was nothing coarse in the meal. The golden tinge of the
+almond pound-cake—a master work of Mrs. Spicer’s—contrasted with the
+purple bloom of grapes and blue-gages, the olive tint of ripe figs.
+
+‘We are making such a tremendous meal that I’m afraid we shall none of
+us do justice to my mother’s dinner,’ remonstrated Edgar at last, ‘and
+that will make her miserable.’
+
+‘A quarter to seven,’ said Gerald, stealing a glance at a little
+effeminate watch. ‘Don’t you think it is time we should descend from
+this Shakespearian empyrean to common earth?’
+
+This was the signal for a general move. The heavy, comfortable-looking
+old carriage-horses had been walked up and down in shady places, while
+the portly coachman dozed on his box, and the more vivacious footman
+execrated the flies. And now the landau bowled briskly along the smooth
+high road to Hawksyard, containing as cheerful a quartette as ever went
+out to dinner.
+
+Madoline was delighted to see her sister so happy, delighted at Edgar’s
+obvious devotion. She had no doubt that his love would be rewarded in
+due course. It is in a woman’s nature to be grateful for such honest
+affection, to be won by such disinterested fidelity.
+
+The brazen hands of the old clock at Hawksyard indicated a quarter to
+eight, as the carriage drove across the bridge, and under the arched
+gateway into the quadrangular garden, with its sunk pathways, and
+shallow steps, and border-lines of crumbling old stone. Mrs. Turchill
+was standing on the threshold—a dignified figure in a gray poplin gown
+and old thread-lace cap and ruffles—ready to receive them. She gave
+Madoline her blandest smile, and was tolerably gracious to the rival
+who had spoiled her son’s chances; but she could not bring herself to
+be cordial to Daphne. Her silk bodice became as rigid as an Elizabethan
+corset when she greeted that obnoxious damsel. She had a shrewd
+suspicion that it was for her sake the fatted calf had been killed, and
+all the available cream in the dairy squandered upon sweets and made
+dishes, with a reckless disregard of next Saturday’s butter-making.
+Yet as Daphne shyly put out her hand to accept that cold greeting,
+too sensitive not to perceive the matron’s unfriendliness, Mrs.
+Turchill could but own to herself that the minx was passing lovely.
+The brilliant gray eyes, shadowed with dark lashes; the dark brows
+and golden hair; the complexion of lilies and roses; the sensitive
+mouth; the play of life and colour in a face that varied with every
+thought—yes; this made beauty which even Mrs. Turchill could not deny.
+
+‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ thought the dowager. ‘God forbid that
+my boy should trust the happiness of his life to such a butterfly.’
+
+Inwardly rebellious, she had nevertheless done her duty as a good
+housekeeper. The old oak-dadoed drawing-room was looking its prettiest,
+brightened by oriental jars and bowls of scarlet geraniums and creamy
+roses, lavender and honeysuckle. The silver chandelier and fire-irons
+were resplendent with recent polishing. The diamond-paned lattices
+were opened to admit the scent of heliotrope and mignonette from the
+garden on the other side of the moat; while one deeply-recessed window
+looking into the quadrangle let in the perfume of the old-world
+flowers Francis Bacon loved.
+
+Edgar insisted upon showing Daphne the house during the ten minutes
+before dinner.
+
+‘You have only been here once,’ he said, ‘and my mother did not show
+you anything.’
+
+After the two girls had taken off their hats in the state bed-chamber
+next the drawing-room—a room whose walls were panelled with needlework
+executed by an ancestress of Edgar’s in the reign of Charles the
+First—they all went off to explore the house; ascending a steep
+secret stair which they entered from a door in the panelling of the
+dining-room; exploring long slippery corridors and queer little
+rooms that opened mysteriously out of other rooms; and triangular
+dressing-closets squeezed into a corner between a chimney and an
+outer-wall; laughing at the old furniture: the tall toppling four-post
+bed-steads; the sage-green tapestry; the capacious old grates, or still
+older brazen dogs; the inimitable Dutch tiles.
+
+‘It must be heavenly to live in such a funny old house,’ cried Daphne,
+as they came cautiously down the black oak staircase, slippery as
+glass, pausing to admire a ramshackle collection of Indian curios and
+Japanese pottery on the broad window-ledge half-way down.
+
+‘If you would only try it,’ murmured Edgar close in her ear, and
+looking ineffably sheepish as he spoke.
+
+Again the all-significant words fell unheeded. She skipped lightly down
+the remaining stairs, protesting she could get accustomed to them in no
+time.
+
+‘“So light a foot will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint,”’ said
+Gerald.
+
+‘Didn’t I tell you so? You can’t live without quoting him,’ cried
+Daphne triumphantly.
+
+The dinner went off merrily. It was a capital dinner in a good old
+English style, ponderous but excellent. There were none of those
+refinements which distinguished the board over which Mrs. Ferrers
+presided. The attempts at elegance smacked of a banished era. A
+turbot decorated with sliced lemon and barberries; a befrilled
+haunch, exhibiting its noble proportions in a heavy silver dish; a
+superabundance of creams and jellies and trifles and syllabubs; an
+elaborate dessert lying in state on the sideboard, to be slowly and
+laboriously transferred to the polished oak after the cloth was drawn;
+and the coachman to help wait at table. The whole thing was rustic and
+old-fashioned, and Edgar was afraid Daphne was secretly turning it all
+into ridicule. Yet she seemed happy, and she said so much in praise of
+Hawksyard and of the perfect order in which the house was kept, that
+Mrs. Turchill’s heart began to soften towards her.
+
+‘You seem fond of the country, and of countrified ways, Miss Daphne,’
+said the matron relentingly. ‘Yet I should have thought a young lady
+like you would have been pining for London, and balls and theatres.’
+
+‘I never was at a dance in my life,’ answered Daphne, ‘and only once at
+a theatre, and that was the great opera-house in Paris. I don’t think I
+should ever care to go to a meaner theatre. My thoughts went up so high
+that night, I shouldn’t like to let them down again by seeing trumpery.’
+
+‘The London theatres are very nice,’ said Mrs. Turchill, not quite
+following Daphne’s idea. ‘But they are rather warm in summer. Yet one
+likes to go up to town in the height of the season. There is so much to
+see.’
+
+‘Mother’s constitution is cast-iron when she gets to London,’
+said Edgar. ‘She is up at six every morning, and goes to the
+picture-galleries as soon as the doors are opened; and does her morning
+in Hyde Park, and her afternoon in Regent Street, shopping, or staring
+in at the shop-windows; and eats her dinner at the most crowded
+restaurant I can take her to; and winds up at the theatre. I believe
+she’d accept a lobster-supper in the Haymarket if I were to offer one.’
+
+‘Has Miss Daphne Lawford never been in London?’ asked Mrs. Turchill.
+
+‘Oh, please don’t call me miss. I am never anything but Daphne to my
+friends.’
+
+‘You are very kind,’ answered Mrs. Turchill, stiffening; ‘but I
+don’t think I could take so great a liberty with you on such a short
+acquaintance.’
+
+‘Short acquaintance!’ echoed Daphne, laughing. ‘Why, you must have
+known me when I was in my cradle.’
+
+Mrs. Turchill grew suddenly red, as if the idea were embarrassing.
+
+‘I was invited to your christening,’ she said; ‘but—afterwards—there
+were circumstances—Sir Vernon was so often abroad. We did not see much
+of you.’
+
+‘If you wish me to feel at home at Hawksyard you must call me Daphne,
+please,’ said the girl gently.
+
+Mrs. Turchill did not wish her to feel at home at Hawksyard; yet she
+could not refuse compliance with so gracious a request.
+
+The ladies rose to retire, Edgar opening the door for them.
+
+‘Do you want any more wine, Turchill?’ asked Gerald.
+
+‘No, not particularly; but you’ll try that other claret, won’t you?’
+
+‘Not a drop of it. I vote we all adjourn to the garden.’
+
+So they all went out together into the twilit quadrangle, where the
+old-fashioned flowers were folding their petals for night and slumber,
+while the moon was rising above a cluster of stone chimneys. Mrs.
+Turchill walked once round the little enclosure, discoursing graciously
+with Madoline, and then confessed to feeling chilly, and being afraid
+of the night air; although a very clever doctor, with somewhat
+new-fangled ideas, had told her that the air was as good by night as by
+day, provided the weather were dry.
+
+‘I think I’ll go indoors and sit in the drawing-room till you come in
+to tea,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t think me rude.’
+
+Madoline offered to go with her, but this Mrs. Turchill would not allow.
+
+‘Young people enjoy a moonlight stroll,’ she said; ‘I liked it myself
+when I was your age. There’s no occasion for any of you to hurry. I
+shall amuse myself with _The Times_. I haven’t looked at it yet.’
+
+The four being left together naturally divided themselves into two
+couples. Gerald and Lina seemed fascinated by the flowery quadrangle,
+with its narrow walks, and ancient dial, on which the moon was now
+shining. They strolled slowly up and down the paths; or lingered beside
+the dial; or stood looking down at the fish-pond. Daphne’s restless
+spirit soon tired of these narrow bounds.
+
+‘Is there nothing else to look at?’ she asked.
+
+‘There are the stables, and the dairy, and the farm-yard. But you must
+see those by daylight; you must come here for a long day,’ said Edgar
+eagerly. ‘Would you like to see the garden on the other side of the
+moat?’
+
+‘Above all things.’
+
+‘It is very flat,’ said Edgar apologetically.
+
+‘All the better for tennis.’
+
+‘Yes, the lawn would make a magnificent tennis-ground. We might have
+eight courts if we liked. But it is a very commonplace garden after
+South Hill.’
+
+‘Don’t apologise. I am sure it is nice; a dear old-fashioned sort of
+garden—hollyhocks, and sunflowers, and things.’
+
+‘My old gardener is rather proud of his hollyhocks.’
+
+‘Precisely; I knew he would be. And that horrid MacCloskie will hear
+of nothing but the newest inventions in flowers. He gives us floral
+figures in Euclid; floral hearthrugs sprawling over the lawn, as if
+one of the housemaids had taken out a Persian rug to dust it, and had
+forgotten to take it in again. He takes tremendous pains to build up
+beds like supper-dishes—ornamental salads, don’t you know—and calls
+that high-art gardening. I would rather have your hollyhocks and
+sunflowers, and the old-fashioned scented clematis climbing about
+everywhere in a tangled mass of sweetness.’
+
+‘I’m glad you like antiquated gardens,’ said Edgar.
+
+They went under the archway, which echoed the sound of their footsteps,
+and round by a gravel walk to the spacious lawn, and the long border
+which was the despair of the gardeners when they tried to fill it, and
+which yet provided flowers enough to keep all the sitting-rooms bright
+and sweet with summer bloom. The moon was high above Hawksyard by this
+time: a glorious harvest moon, pouring down her golden light upon tree
+and flower, and giving intensity to the shadows under the wall. The
+waters of the moat looked black, save where the moonbeams touched them;
+and yonder under the tall spreading walnut boughs the gravel walk was
+all in shadow.
+
+Daphne paced the lawn, disputing as to how many tennis-courts one might
+have on such on extensive parallelogram. She admired the height of the
+hollyhocks, and regretted that their colour did not show by moonlight.
+The sunflowers appeared to better advantage.
+
+‘What awful stories poets tell about them!’ said Daphne. ‘Just look at
+that brazen-faced creature, smirking at the moon; just as if she had
+never turned her head sunwards in her life.’
+
+Edgar was in a sentimental mood, and inclined to see things from a
+sentimental point of view
+
+‘It mayn’t be botanically true,’ he said, ‘but it’s a pretty idea all
+the same;’ and then he trolled out in a fine baritone:
+
+    ‘No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,
+       But as truly loves on to the close;
+     As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,
+       The same look which she turned when he rose.’
+
+‘What’s the use of singing that when you know it isn’t true?’ cried
+Daphne contemptuously. ‘Do you suppose a stiff-necked thing like that,
+with a stalk a quarter of an inch in diameter, could turn and twist
+from east to west every day, without wringing its head off? The idea is
+obviously absurd. What lovely old walnut-trees!’ she exclaimed, looking
+across the lawn. ‘Centuries upon centuries old, are they not?’
+
+‘I believe they were planted soon after George the Third came to the
+throne.’
+
+‘Is that all? They look as old as the Wrekin.’
+
+They strolled across the wide lawn, and in among the shadows of the old
+trees. The cows were moving stealthily about in the meadow on the other
+side of the fence, as if sleep were the last thing they ever thought of.
+
+‘And you really like Hawksyard?’ demanded Edgar earnestly.
+
+‘Like it! I think it is quite the most delicious place I ever saw.
+Those high dadoes; these deep-set stone-mullioned windows; those
+eccentric little bedrooms; that secret staircase, so sweetly suggestive
+of murder and treason. The whole place is so thoroughly original.’
+
+‘It is one of the few moated granges left in England,’ said Edgar with
+an air of conscious merit.
+
+‘It is quite too lovely.’
+
+‘Daphne, do you really mean what you say?’ he asked with sudden
+intensity. ‘Are you only talking like this to please me—out of
+kindness?’
+
+‘If I have a fault it is a habit of blurting out what I think, without
+reference to other people’s feelings. I am thoroughly in earnest about
+Hawksyard.’
+
+‘Then be its mistress,’ exclaimed Edgar, taking her hand, and trying to
+draw her towards him; ‘be queen of my house, darling, as you have long
+been sovereign of my heart. Make me the happiest man that ever yonder
+old roof sheltered—the proudest, the most entirely blest. Daphne, I am
+not poetical, or clever. I can’t find many words, but—I love you—I love
+you.’
+
+She laughed in his face, a clear and silvery peal—laughed him to
+absolute scorn; yet without a touch of ill-nature.
+
+‘My dear Edgar, this is too much,’ she cried. ‘A few months ago you
+were fondly, devotedly, irrevocably in love with Lina. Don’t you
+remember how we sympathised that afternoon in the meadows? This is the
+sunflower over again: first to the sun and then to the moon. No, dear
+Edgar, never talk to me of love. I have a real honest regard for you. I
+respect you. I trust you as my very brother. It would spoil all if you
+were to persist in talking nonsense of this kind.’
+
+She left him, planted there—mute as a statue—frozen with mortification,
+humiliation, despair.
+
+    ‘He either fears his fate too much,
+       Or his deserts are small,
+     Who dares not put it to the touch,
+       To win or lose it all.’
+
+He had tried his fate—hopefully, confidently even—lured on by her
+deceptive sweetness; and all was lost.
+
+She had run lightly off. She was on the other side of the lawn before
+he stirred from the attitude in which she left him; his hands clenched,
+his head bent, his eyes staring stupidly at the gravel walk.
+
+‘She does not care a straw for me,’ he said to himself, ‘not a straw.
+And I thought she had grown fond of me. I thought I had but to speak.’
+
+A friendly hand touched him lightly on the shoulder. It was Gerald,
+the man for whom Fate had reserved all good things—unbounded talents,
+unbounded wealth, the love of a perfect woman.
+
+‘Cheer up, old fellow,’ said Gerald heartily. ‘Forgive me if I heard
+more than you intended me to hear. Mrs. Turchill sent me in quest of
+you and Daphne, and I came up—just as you—’
+
+‘Just as I made an ass of myself,’ interrupted Edgar. ‘It doesn’t
+matter. I don’t a bit mind your knowing. I have no pride of that kind.
+I am proud of loving her, even in vain.’
+
+‘Don’t be down-hearted, man. A girl of that kind must be played as
+an expert angler plays a frisky young salmon. She has refused you
+to-night; she may accept you three months hence.’
+
+‘She laughed at me,’ said Edgar, with deepest despondency.
+
+‘It is her disposition to laugh at all things. You must have patience,
+man; patience and persistence. “My love is but a lassie yet.” Thy
+beloved one still delights in the green fields; her tender neck cannot
+bear the yoke. Wait, and she will turn to thee—as—as the sunflower
+turns to the sun,’ concluded Gerald, having vainly sought a better
+comparison.
+
+‘It doesn’t,’ cried Edgar dejectedly. ‘That is what we have just been
+talking about. The sunflower is a stiff-necked impostor.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+‘NOT FOR YOUR LINAGE, NE FOR YOUR RICHESSE.’
+
+
+The two young men walked up and down under the walnut-trees for nearly
+an hour, Gerald Goring playing the unaccustomed part of consoler.
+He liked Edgar Turchill with an honest liking. There was a shade of
+condescension, of unconscious patronage, in the feeling; but it was
+thoroughly sincere. The Saxon squire was of course distinctly on a
+lower intellectual level than the man of mixed race—the man whose
+father had thrust himself into the front ranks of life by the sheer
+force of will and brains, unaided by conventional training of any kind;
+whose mother had been the last development of a family reared in courts
+and palaces. Compared with the quicksilver that flowed in his own
+veins, Edgar Turchill’s blood was a fluid that smacked of the vegetable
+kingdom—watery stuff such as oozes out of a turnip or a cabbage when
+the cook-maid cuts it. Yet the man could feel, and so keenly, that
+Gerald was touched with tender pity.
+
+‘Don’t be down-hearted, old fellow,’ he said, walking slowly under the
+spreading boughs, with his hand resting affectionately upon Turchill’s
+shoulder. ‘Be sure things will work round in time. She is a pert
+capricious minx; but she cannot help being fond of you, if you are only
+patient.’
+
+‘I would wait for her as Jacob waited for Rachel, if I were as sure
+of winning her,’ answered Edgar; ‘but I am afraid there’s no chance.
+If she detested me; if the very sight of me were odious to her; there
+might be some hope. But she likes me—she is even fond of me; in a calm
+sisterly way. If you knew how sweet she was to me in the spring before
+you came—she had no fits of temper then—when I taught her sculling; how
+she used to boil a kettle down in the boat-house and——’
+
+‘Yes; it was awfully nice of her,’ interjected Gerald somewhat
+impatiently, having heard the story of these boat-house breakfasts
+several times before.
+
+‘If she were less kind I should have more hope,’ pursued Edgar. ‘I
+think I shall go away—out of the country—where I shall never see her
+lovely face. I have a great mind to go to India and shoot big game.’
+
+‘And stick pigs?—a curious cure for the heart-ache. No, old fellow;
+stay at home and bide your time. That’s your game.’
+
+‘I could never look her in the face after to-night,’ said Edgar.
+
+‘Nonsense, man! Treat this capricious minx as coolly as if nothing
+had ever been said about love and despair. Let her think to-night’s
+avowal the consequence of too much wine—a mere after-dinner outburst
+of sentiment. Look her in the face, forsooth! If you are a wise man,
+you may make her ashamed to look you in the face before she is six
+months older. You have spoilt her by your flatteries and footings
+and compliances. Give her a little of the rough side of your bark.
+She professes to care for you as a brother, quotha! Treat her with
+brotherly discourtesy—brotherly indifference. Be as candid about her
+faults and follies as if you were her very brother. When she finds you
+can live without her she will begin to languish for the old adulation.’
+
+‘I love her too well to be such a Jesuit,’ said Edgar.
+
+‘Pshaw! do you suppose Petruchio did not love Kate? He knew there was
+but one way of taming his fair shrew, and he used the wisdom Heaven had
+given him.’
+
+‘I couldn’t act a part where she is concerned,’ argued Edgar. ‘She
+would find me out in a moment.’
+
+They talked for a long time upon the same subject, wearing the theme
+threadbare; travelling backwards and forwards over the same line of
+argument, while the moon climbed higher and higher in the cloudless
+blue; and in the end Edgar acknowledged that it would be a foolish
+thing to leave his farm before the harvest was all in; or his mother,
+before she had enjoyed her annual fortnight at the sea-side; or to
+uproot himself violently from his native soil in the vain hope of
+curing his heart-wound. He had tried foreign air for his malady before,
+and foreign air had done nothing for him; and this time he believed the
+wound to be ever so much deeper. A lifetime in a strange country would
+hardly heal it.
+
+At last Edgar consented to be led despondently back to the house, which
+he had left a little while ago with his heart beating high, full of
+hope and delight. They found the three ladies seated in the quaint old
+drawing-room, dimly lighted by a dozen or so of candles in the silver
+sconces against the wall. There was nothing so distinctly modern as a
+moderator-lamp at Hawksyard.
+
+Mrs. Turchill was enlarging mildly in a lowered voice upon the various
+shortcomings of her servants, who, although old servants and infinitely
+better than other people’s, were yet so far human in their faultiness
+as to afford food for conversation. Madoline was listening with polite
+interest, throwing in an encouraging word now and then, which was
+hardly needed, for Mrs. Turchill’s monologue would have gone on just
+the same without it. Daphne, exhausted by a long day’s vivacity, had
+fallen asleep, bolt erect in a straight-backed cherry-wood chair.
+
+Gerald Goring remembered that day at Fontainebleau when he had told
+himself that Daphne asleep would be a very commonplace young person;
+yet, as he looked at her to-night, he was fain to own that even in
+slumber she was lovely. Was it some trick of candle-light and shadow
+which gave such piquancy to the delicate features, which gave such
+expression to the dark-pencilled brows and drooping eyelids? The bright
+hair, the pale yellow gown, the exquisite fairness of the complexion,
+gave a lily-like loveliness to the whole figure. So pale; so pure; so
+little earthly.
+
+‘Poor Edgar!’ sighed Mr. Goring. ‘He is very much to be pitied. How
+desperately I could have loved such a girl, if I had not already
+adored her opposite. And how I would have made her love me,’ he added,
+remembering all their foolish talk, and how easy it had seemed to him
+to play upon that sensitive nature.
+
+‘I am afraid the tea is cold,’ said Mrs. Turchill. ‘You gentlemen have
+been enjoying your cigars in the walnut walk, I suppose.’
+
+The clatter of cups and saucers startled Daphne. She opened her eyes,
+and saw Edgar looking at her with piteous reproachfulness. She could
+calmly sleep just after giving him his death-wound. There was a
+refinement of cruelty in such indifference. Then he suddenly remembered
+Gerald’s advice, and tried to seem equally at his ease.
+
+‘I’ll wager mother has been bemoaning the vices of the new dairymaid,
+and the ingratitude of the old one in going away to be married,’ said
+he. ‘That’s what sent you to sleep, wasn’t it, Daphne?’
+
+‘I was tired. We had such a long afternoon,’ she answered wearily.
+
+‘The carriage has been waiting half an hour,’ said Madoline. ‘I think
+we had better put on our hats, and then say good-night.’
+
+‘Mr. Goring will drive home with you, of course,’ said Mrs. Turchill.
+
+‘Yes; I am going to see them safe home, Mrs. Turchill,’ answered
+Gerald. ‘I am to stay at South Hill to-night, and hear Sir Vernon’s
+account of the Yeomanry dinner.’
+
+Edgar, who had just been talking of eternal banishment, was longing to
+ask for the fourth seat in the landau. The walk home between midnight
+and morning would be delightful.
+
+‘I should have liked to hear about the dinner,’ he began dubiously; and
+then meeting Gerald’s eye, quailed beneath its friendly ridicule, and
+said no more.
+
+He escorted Daphne to the carriage, helped to arrange her wraps with a
+steady hand, though his heart beat passionately all the time; and bade
+her good-night in so thoroughly cheery a voice, that she wondered a
+little to find how easily he had taken her rejection of him.
+
+‘Poor dear Edgar!’ she said to herself as they drove along the shadowy
+Warwickshire lane, through the calm beauty of the summer night, ‘I
+daresay it was only an impulse of the moment—or perhaps it was the
+moon—that made him propose to me. Yet he seemed awfully in earnest, and
+I was afraid I might have offended him by laughing. But, after being
+devoted to Lina, and making me the confidante of his grief, it was
+certainly rather impertinent to offer himself to me. But he is a dear
+good-natured creature all the same, and I should be sorry to offend
+him.’
+
+She was silent all the way home; sitting in her comfortable corner
+of the carriage, wrapped to her chin in her soft white shawl, to all
+appearance asleep. Yet not once did her senses lose themselves in
+slumber. She was listening to the happy lovers, as they talked of the
+past—that part of the past which they had spent asunder. Gerald had
+been talking of a long mule-ride in Switzerland under just such a
+moonlit sky. It was no tremendous mountain ascent, only a ride from
+Evian up to a village at the foot of the Dent d’Oche, to look down upon
+Lake Leman and its lovely shores bathed in moonlight; the long dark
+range of the Jura rising like a wall on the western side; picturesque
+villages on the banks gleaming in the silver light, with their old
+church towers half hidden by masses of dark foliage; one lonely boat
+with its twin sails skimming like a swallow across the moonlit water.
+
+‘It must have been delicious,’ said Lina.
+
+‘It was very nice—except that you were not there. “But one thing want
+these banks of Rhine.”’
+
+‘And did you really miss me at such moments, Gerald? When you were
+looking at some especially lovely scene, had you really and truly a
+feeling that I ought to have been by your side?’
+
+‘Really and truly; the better half of myself was missing. Pleasure
+was only a one-sided affair, as that moon will appear next week—an
+uncomfortable-looking fragmentary kind of planet.’
+
+‘I love to hear of your travels, Gerald,’ said Lina softly. ‘Have you
+told me all about them, do you think?’
+
+‘All that’s worth telling, I fancy,’ he answered lightly, with an
+involuntary glance at Daphne to see if she were really asleep.
+
+There was no quiver of the dark lashes, no movement in the restful
+figure. Her face had that pale unearthly look which all faces have in
+the moonlight. A pain shot through his heart as he thought that it was
+thus she would look in death. It was one of those involuntary flashes
+of thought which sometimes flit across a mind unacquainted with actual
+sorrow—the phantom of a grief that might be.
+
+When they arrived at South Hill Daphne wished her sister and Mr.
+Goring a brief good-night, and went straight to her room. She had no
+motive for awaiting her father’s home-coming. He would have nothing
+to say to her. His only greeting would be a look which seemed to ask
+what business she had there. It was on the stroke of eleven. Madoline
+and Gerald walked up and down the gravel drive in front of the house,
+waiting for the carriage from Warwick; and during this interval Mr.
+Goring told his sweetheart how Edgar Turchill had been rejected by
+Daphne. Madoline was deeply distressed by this news. She had made up
+her mind that her sister’s life was to be made happy in this particular
+way. She had imagined a fair and peaceful future in which she would be
+living at the Abbey, and Daphne at Hawksyard—not a dozen miles apart.
+And now this wilful Daphne had rejected the moated grange and its
+owner, and that fair picture of the future had no more reality in it
+than a mirage city seen from the dreary sands of a desert.
+
+‘I thought she was attached to him,’ said Madoline, when she had been
+told the whole story. ‘She has encouraged him to come here; she has
+always seemed happy in his company. Half her life, since she came from
+school, has been spent with him.’
+
+‘In sober earnest, darling, I’m afraid this fascinating little sister
+of yours is an arrant coquette. She has flirted with Edgar because
+there was no one else to flirt with.’
+
+‘Please don’t say that, Gerald, for I know you are mistaken,’ answered
+Madoline eagerly. ‘Daphne is no flirt. She looks upon Edgar as a kind
+of adopted brother. I have always known that, but I fancied that this
+friendly trustful feeling of hers would lead in time to a warmer
+attachment. As to coquetry, she does not know what it means. She is
+thoroughly childlike and innocent.’
+
+‘Possibly, dearest. Yet in her childishness she knows how to fool a
+man as thoroughly as Ninon de l’Enclos could have done after half a
+century’s practice. However, I hope Edgar will stand his ground and
+bring this wayward puss to her senses.’
+
+‘I cannot understand how she can help liking him,’ mused Madoline. ‘He
+is so good, so frank, and brave, and true.’
+
+‘All noble qualities, and deserving a woman’s affection. Yet the
+sentimental history of the human race tends to show that a man endowed
+with all those virtues is not the most dangerous to the fair sex.’
+
+‘Gerald,’ said Lina, ‘I have an idea that pride is at the bottom of
+Daphne’s refusal.’
+
+‘Why pride? What kind of pride?’
+
+‘She has harped a good deal, at different times, upon her penniless
+position; has called herself a pauper, half in joke, half in earnest,
+but with a bitterness of tone that wounded me. She may think that as
+Edgar is well off, and she has no fortune, she ought not to accept him.’
+
+‘My dearest love, what an utterly quixotic idea. The only thought a
+pretty young woman ever has about a man’s wealth is that when she shall
+be his wife she can have more frocks than the common run of women.
+There is no sense of obligation. She is so conscious of the boon she
+bestows that she accepts his filthy lucre as a matter of course.’
+
+‘I don’t think that would be Daphne’s way of thinking.’
+
+‘Dearest, if she were wholly your sister I should say not. But as she
+is only your half-sister, I can suppose her only about half as good
+again as the ruck of womankind.’
+
+‘You are very rich, are you not, Gerald?’
+
+‘Well, yes; it would take a large amount of idiocy on my part to spoil
+the income my father left me. It might be done, no doubt, if I went
+into the right circles. My ruin would be only a question of so many
+years and so many racehorses. But while I live as I am living now,
+there is very little chance of my becoming acquainted with want.’
+
+‘I know, dear; and I don’t think it was for the sake of my fortune you
+chose me, was it, Gerald?’
+
+‘My dearest love, I only wish some old nurse would turn up on your
+wedding morning and tell you that you are not the Lady Clare, so that I
+might prove to you how little wealth or position influenced my choice.
+I think I know what you are going to say, Lina. As I have more money
+than you and I together—indulge our caprices as we may—are ever likely
+to spend, why not give your fortune to Daphne?’
+
+‘Dear Gerald, how good of you to guess my wish! I should like to divide
+my fortune with my sister when I come of age. I don’t want to give her
+all, for half would be ample. And I am so accustomed to the idea of
+independence, that I should hardly like to be a pensioner even upon
+you. Will you speak to the lawyers, Gerald, and find out how the gift
+had better be made?’
+
+‘Yes, dear; I’ll settle everything with the men of law. It seems to me
+that you can do just what you like, as soon as you come of age. But
+you’ll have to wait till then.’
+
+‘Only ascertain that it can be done, Gerald, and then I can tell
+Daphne, and she will no longer fancy herself a pauper. It may influence
+her in her conduct to Edgar.’
+
+‘It may,’ answered Gerald dubiously; ‘but somehow I don’t think it
+will. Edgar must win the game off his own bat.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The sisters were alone together in Madoline’s morning-room after
+breakfast next day. Gerald had gone to the Abbey to look after the
+builders, and settle various matters with his steward. Daphne was
+sitting half in and half out of the balcony, idle as was natural to
+her, but listless and discontented-looking, which was a state of mind
+she did not often exhibit.
+
+There was no Edgar this morning, and she missed her faithful slave.
+
+Perhaps he meant never to come to South Hill any more; in which case it
+would be difficult for her to get rid of her life.
+
+‘Daphne,’ began Madoline gravely, ‘I have heard something which has
+made me very unhappy; which has altogether surprised and disappointed
+me. I am told that Edgar proposed to you last night, and that you
+refused him.’
+
+‘Did he send you the news in a telegram?’ asked Daphne, flaming red. ‘I
+don’t see how else you could have heard it.’
+
+‘No matter how I heard it, dear. It is the truth, I suppose.’
+
+‘Yes; it is the truth. But I despise him for telling you,’ answered
+Daphne angrily.
+
+‘It was not he who told me. It was Gerald, who by accident overheard
+the end of your conversation with Edgar, and who——’
+
+‘What! he has been interfering, has he?’ cried Daphne, looking still
+more angry. ‘It is supremely impertinent of him to busy himself about
+my affairs.’
+
+‘Daphne! Is that the way you speak of my future husband—your future
+brother?’
+
+‘He has no right to dictate whom I am to accept or reject. What can it
+matter to him?’
+
+‘He does not presume to dictate: but it does matter a great deal to him
+that my sister should choose the path in life which is most likely to
+lead to happiness.’
+
+‘How can he tell which path will lead me to happiness? Does he suppose
+that I am going to have a husband chosen for me—as if I were a wretched
+French girl educated in a convent?’
+
+‘He thought—just as I thought—that you could hardly help liking such a
+thoroughly good fellow as Edgar; a man so devoted to you; so unselfish;
+such a good son.’
+
+‘What have I to do with his virtues? I don’t care a straw for him,
+except as a friendly sort of creature who will do anything I ask him,
+and who is very nice to play tennis or billiards with. He ought not to
+be offended at my refusing him. It would have been all the same had he
+been anyone else. I shall never marry.’
+
+‘But why not, Daphne?’
+
+‘Oh, for no particular reason: except perhaps that I am too fond of my
+own way, and shouldn’t like a master.’
+
+‘Daphne, there is something in your tone that alarms me. It is so
+unnatural in a girl of your age. While you were at Asnières, did you
+ever see anyone—you were such a child, that it seems foolish to ask
+such a question—but was there anyone at Asnières whom——’
+
+‘Whom I fell in love with? No, dearest, there was no one at Asnières.
+Madame Tolmache was most judicious in her selection of masters. I don’t
+think the most romantic school-girl, fed upon three-volume novels,
+could have fancied herself in love even with the best-looking of them.’
+
+‘I can’t make you out, Daphne. Yet I think you might be very happy as
+Edgar Turchill’s wife. It would be so nice for us to be living in the
+same county, within a few miles of each other.’
+
+‘Yes, that would be nice; and it would be nicer to be at Hawksyard than
+to stay at South Hill when you are gone. Yet you see I have too much
+self-respect to perjure myself, and pretend to return poor Edgar’s
+affection.’
+
+‘I have been thinking, Daphne, that perhaps some sense of mistaken
+pride may stand between you and Edgar.’
+
+And then, falteringly, ashamed of her own generosity, Madoline told her
+sister how she meant to divide her fortune.
+
+‘What!’ cried Daphne, turning pale; ‘take his money? Not a sixpence.
+Never speak of it—never think of such a thing again.’
+
+‘Whose money, dear? It is mine, and mine alone. I have the right to do
+what I like with it.’
+
+‘Would you dispose of it without asking Mr. Goring’s leave—without
+consulting him?’
+
+‘Hardly, because I love him too well to take any step in life without
+asking his advice—without confiding fully in him. But he goes with me
+in this heart and soul, Daphne; he most thoroughly approves my plan.’
+
+‘You are very good—he is very generous—but I will never consent to
+accept sixpence out of your fortune. You may be as generous to me as
+you like—as you have always been, darling. You may give me gloves and
+frocks and pocket-money, while you are Miss Lawford: but to rob you of
+your rights; to lessen your importance as Mrs. Goring; to feel myself
+under an obligation to your husband—not for all this wide world. Not if
+money could make me happy—which it could not,’ she added with a stifled
+sob.
+
+‘Daphne, are you not happy?’ questioned Lina, looking at her with
+sudden distress. ‘My bright one, I thought your life here was all
+gladness and pleasure. You have seemed so happy with Edgar, so
+thoroughly at your ease with him, that I fancied you must be fond of
+him.’
+
+‘Should I be thoroughly at my ease with a man I loved, unless—unless
+our attachment were an old story—a settled business—like yours and Mr.
+Goring’s?’
+
+‘Why will you persist in calling him Mr. Goring?’
+
+‘Oh, he is such a grand personage—the owner of an abbey, with
+cloisters, and half a mile of hot-houses—I could not bring myself to
+call him by his christian-name.’
+
+‘As if the abbey and the hot-houses made any difference! Well, darling,
+I am not going to worry you about poor Edgar. You must choose your own
+way of being happy. I would not for all the world that you should marry
+a man you did not love; but I should have been so glad if you could
+have loved Edgar. And I think, dear, that unintentionally—unconsciously
+even—you have done him a wrong. You have led him to believe you like
+him.’
+
+‘And so I do like him, better than anyone in the world—after my own
+flesh and blood.’
+
+‘Yes, dear. But he has been led to hope something more than that. I
+fear he will feel his disappointment keenly.’
+
+‘Nonsense, Lina. Don’t you know that six months ago he was still
+suffering from his disappointment about you? and now you imagine he is
+going to break his heart for me. A heart so easily transferred cannot
+be easily broken. It is a portable article. No doubt he will carry it
+somewhere else.’
+
+She kissed her sister and ran out of the room, leaving Madoline anxious
+and perplexed, yet not the less resolved to endow Daphne with half her
+wealth as soon as she came of age.
+
+‘Providence never intended that two sisters should be so unequally
+circumstanced,’ she said to herself. ‘Willy-nilly, Daphne must accept
+what I am determined to give her. The lawyers will find out a way.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+‘NO MAN MAY ALWAY HAVE PROSPERITEE.’
+
+
+Edgar Turchill did not go to the other end of the world to hide his
+grief and mortification at this second overthrow of his fondest
+hopes. He absented himself from South Hill for nearly a month, yet
+so contrived as that his absence should not appear the result of
+pride or anger. Mrs. Turchill’s annual sea-side holiday was as much
+an institution as the opening of Parliament, or the Derby: and she
+expected on all such occasions to be escorted and accompanied by
+her only son. She liked a fashionable watering-place, where there
+was a well-dressed crowd to be seen on parade or pier; she required
+to have her leisure enlivened by a good brass band; and she would
+accept nothing less in the way of lodgings than an airy bay-windowed
+drawing-room in the very best part of the sea front.
+
+‘If I am not to come to the sea-side comfortably I would rather stay
+at home,’ she said to her confidante Deborah; an axiom which Deborah
+received as respectfully as if it had been Holy Writ.
+
+‘Of course, mum. Why should you come away from Hawksyard to be cramped
+or moped?’ said Deborah. ‘You’ve all you can wish for there.’
+
+Such murmurings as these had arisen when Edgar, sick to death of
+Brighton and Eastbourne, Scarborough and Torquay, had tempted his
+mother to visit some more romantic and less civilised shore; where
+the accommodation was of the rough-and-ready order, and where there
+was neither parade nor pier for the exhibition of fine clothes to the
+music of brazen bands. For picturesque scenery Mrs. Turchill cared
+not a jot. All wild and rugged coasts she denounced sweepingly, as
+dangerous to life and limb, and therefore to be avoided. The wildest
+bit of scenery she could tolerate was Beachy Head; and even that
+grassy height she deemed objectionable. Nor did she appreciate any
+watering-place which could not boast a smart array of shop-windows. She
+liked to be tempted by trumpery modern Dresden; or to have her love of
+colour gratified by the latest invention in bonnets and parasols. She
+liked a circulating library of the old-fashioned, Miss Burney type;
+where she could dawdle away an hour looking at new books and papers,
+soothed by the sympathetic strains of a musical-box. She liked to have
+her son well-dressed and in a top-hat, in attendance upon her during
+her afternoon drive in the local fly, along a smooth chalky high-road
+leading to nowhere in particular. She liked to attend local concerts,
+or to hear Miss Snevillici, the renowned Shakespearian elocutionist,
+read the Trial Scene in the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ followed by
+Tennyson’s ‘Queen of the May.’
+
+To poor Edgar this sea-side holiday seemed always a foretaste of
+purgatory. It was ever so much worse than the fortnight’s hard labour
+in London, for in the big city there were sights worth seeing; while
+here, at the stereotyped watering-place, life was one dismal round of
+genteel inactivity.
+
+But this year Edgar was seized with a sudden desire to hasten the
+annual expedition.
+
+‘Mother, I think this lovely weather must break up before long,’ he
+said briskly, with a laborious affectation of cheerfulness, as he sat
+at dinner with his parent on the day after Daphne’s cruelty. ‘What
+should you say to our starting for the sea-side to-morrow?’
+
+‘To-morrow! My dear Edgar, that would be quite impossible. I shall want
+a week for packing.’
+
+‘A week! Surely Deborah could put your things into a portmanteau in six
+hours as easily as in six days.’
+
+‘You don’t know what you are talking about, my dear. A lady’s wardrobe
+is so different from a man’s. All my gowns will want looking over
+carefully before they are packed. And I must have Miss Piper over from
+Warwick to do some alterations for me. The fashions change so quickly
+nowadays. And some of my laces will have to be washed. And I am not
+sure that I shall not have to drive over to Leamington and order a
+bonnet. I should not like to disgrace you by appearing on the parade
+with a dowdy bonnet.’
+
+Edgar sighed. He would have liked to go to some wild Welsh or Scottish
+coast, far from beaten tracks. He would have liked some sea-side
+village in the south of Ireland—Dunmore, or Tramore, or Kilkee; some
+quiet retreat nestled in a hollow of the cliffs, where as yet never
+brass band nor fashionable gowns had come; a place to which people came
+for pure love of fine air and grand scenery, and not to show off their
+clothes or advertise their easy circumstances. But he knew that if he
+took his mother to such a place she would be miserable; so he held his
+peace.
+
+‘Where would you like to go this year?’ he said presently.
+
+‘Well, I have been considering that point, Edgar. Let me see now. We
+went to Brighton last year——’
+
+‘Yes,’ sighed Edgar, remembering what a tread-mill business the lawn
+had seemed to him; how ineffably tiresome the Aquarium; how monotonous
+the shops in the King’s Road, and the entertainments at the Pavilion.
+
+‘And to Scarborough the year before.’
+
+‘Yes,’ with a still wearier sigh.
+
+‘And the year before that to Eastbourne; and the year before that to
+Torquay. Don’t you think we might go to Torquay again this year? I hear
+it is very much improved.’
+
+‘Very much built upon, I suppose you mean, mother. More smoky
+chimneys, more hotels, more churches, longer streets. I should think,
+judging by what it had come to when we saw it, that by this time
+Torquay must be a very good imitation of Bayswater. However, if you
+like Torquay——’
+
+‘It is one of the few places I do like.’
+
+‘Then let it be Torquay, by all means. I’ll tell you what I’ll do,
+mother. I’ll run down to Torquay to-morrow, find some nice lodgings for
+you—I think by this time I know exactly what you want in that way—and
+engage them for any day you like to name.’
+
+‘That’s very kind of you, Edgar. But be sure you get some reference as
+to the landlady’s character, so that you may be certain there has been
+no fever case in the house during the last twelvemonth. And it would be
+as well to get a local architect to look at the drains. It would be a
+guinea well spent.’
+
+‘All right, mother; I’ll do anything you like. I am longing for a blow
+of sea-air.’
+
+‘But it will be at least a week before I can come. What will you do
+with yourself in the meantime?’
+
+‘Oh, I shall contrive to amuse myself somehow. I might go on to
+Dartmouth, and charter a boat, and go up the Dart. I want very much to
+see the Dart. Only say on what day I may expect you at Torquay.’
+
+‘Am I to travel alone, Edgar?’
+
+‘You’ll have Deborah. And the journey won’t be difficult. You’ll join
+the express at Swindon, don’t you know——’
+
+‘If you think I can trust to Deborah’s care of the luggage,’ said Mrs.
+Turchill dubiously. ‘She’s very steady.’
+
+‘Steady! Well she ought to be at her age. You’ve only to get the
+luggage labelled, you see, mother——’
+
+‘I never trust to that,’ answered the matron solemnly. ‘I like Deborah
+to get out at every station where the train stops, and see with her own
+eyes that my luggage is in the van. Railway people are so stupid.’
+
+Edgar did not envy Deborah. Having thus adroitly planned an immediate
+departure he was off soon after daybreak next morning, and arrived
+at Torquay in time for dinner. He perambulated the loneliest places
+he could find all the evening, brooding over his disappointment, and
+wondering if there were any foundation for Gerald Goring’s idea that
+Daphne was to be won by him even yet. He slept at The Imperial, and
+devoted the next morning to lodging hunting; till his soul sickened at
+the very sight of the inevitable housemaid, who can’t answer the most
+general inquiry—not so far as to say how many bedrooms there are in
+the house, without reference to the higher powers—and the inevitable
+landlady, who cannot make up her mind about the rent till she has
+asked how many there are in family, and whether late dinners will be
+required. Before sundown, however, after ascending innumerable flights
+of stairs, and looking into a dismal series of newly-furnished rooms,
+he found a suite of apartments which he believed would satisfy his
+mother and Deborah; and having engaged the same for a period of three
+weeks, he went down to the water’s edge, to a spot where boating men
+most did congregate, and there negotiated the hire of a rakish little
+yawl, just big enough to be safe in a summer sea. In this light craft
+he was to sail at six o’clock next morning with a man and a boy.
+
+‘How Daphne would enjoy knocking about this lovely coast in just such
+a boat!’ he thought. ‘If she were my wife, I would buy her as pretty a
+yacht as any lady could desire, and she and I would sail half round the
+world together. She must be tired of the Avon, poor child.’
+
+Daphne was very tired of the Avon. Never had the days of her life
+seemed longer or drearier than they seemed to her just now, when
+her faithful slave Edgar was no longer at hand to minister to her
+caprices. A strange stillness seemed to have fallen upon South Hill.
+Sir Vernon was laid up with that suppressed gout which Daphne fancied
+was only another name for unsuppressed ill-temper, so closely did the
+two complaints seem allied. At such times Madoline was more than ever
+necessary to his well-being. She sat with him in the library; she read
+to him; she wrote his letters; and was in all things verily his right
+hand. The most pure and perfect filial love sweetened an office which
+would have seemed hard to an ungrateful or cold-hearted daughter. Yet
+in the close retirement of the stern-looking businesslike chamber, with
+its prim bookshelves and standard literature—not a book which every
+decently-read student does not know from cover to cover—she could but
+remember the bright summer days that were done; the aimless wanderings
+in meadow and wood; the drives to Goring Abbey; the tea-drinkings in
+the cloisters or in the gardens; the happy season which was gone. The
+knowledge that this one happy summer, the first she and Gerald had
+ever spent together as engaged lovers, was ended and over, made her
+feel as if some part of her own youth had gone with it—something which
+could never come again. It had been such an utterly happy period;
+such peerless weather; such a fair gladsome earth, teeming with all
+good things—even the farmers ceasing to grumble, and owning that, for
+once in a way, there was hope of a prosperous harvest. And now it
+was over; the corn was reaped, and sportsmen were tramping over the
+stubble; the plough-horses were creeping slowly across the hill; the
+sun was beginning to decline soon after five-o’clock tea; breathings of
+approaching winter sharpened the sweet morning breezes; autumnal mists
+veiled the meadows at eventide.
+
+Gerald Goring had gone to Scotland to shoot grouse. It seemed to
+Daphne, prowling about gardens and meadows with Goldie in a purposeless
+manner that was the essence of idleness, as if the summer had gone in
+a breath. Yesterday she was here, that glorious, radiant, disembodied
+goddess we call Summer—yesterday she was here, and all the lanes were
+sweetened with lime-blossoms, and the roses were being wasted with
+prodigal profusion, and the river ran liquid gold; and to sit on a
+sunny bank was to be steeped in warm delight. To-day there were only
+stiff-looking dahlias, and variegated foliage, and mouse-coloured
+plants, and house-leek borders, in the gardens where the roses had
+been; and to sit on a grassy bank was to shiver or to sneeze. The river
+had a dismal look. There had been heavy rains within the last few days,
+and the willowy banks were hidden under dull mud-coloured water. There
+was no more pleasure in boating.
+
+‘You may oil her, or varnish her, or do anything that is proper to be
+done with her before you put her away for the winter, Bink,’ Daphne
+said to her faithful attendant; ‘I shan’t row any more this year.’
+
+‘Lor, miss, we may have plenty more fine days yet.’
+
+‘I don’t care for that. I am tired of rowing. Perhaps I may never row
+again.’
+
+She went into luncheon yawning, and looking much more tired than
+Madoline, who had been writing letters for her father all the morning.
+
+‘I wish I were a hunting young woman, Lina,’ she said.
+
+‘Why, dear?’
+
+‘Because I should have something to look forward to in the winter.’
+
+‘If you could only employ yourself more indoors, Daphne.’
+
+‘Do I not employ myself indoors? Why, I play billiards for hours at a
+stretch when I have anyone to play with. I practised out-of-the-way
+strokes for an hour and a half this morning.’
+
+‘I am sure, dear, you would be happier if you had some more feminine
+amusements; if you were to go on with your water-colour painting, for
+instance. Gerald could give you a little instruction when he is here.
+He paints beautifully. I’m sure he would be pleased to help you.’
+
+‘No, dear; I have no talent. I like beginning a sketch; but directly
+it begins to look horrid I lose patience; and then I begin to lay on
+colour in a desperate way, till the whole thing is the most execrable
+daub imaginable; and then I get into a rage and tear it into a thousand
+bits. It’s just the same with my needlework; there always comes a time
+when I get my thread entangled, and begin to pucker, and the whole
+business goes wrong. I have no patience. I shall never finish anything.
+I shall never achieve anything. I am an absolute failure.’
+
+‘Daphne, if you only knew how it pains me to hear you talk of yourself
+like that——’
+
+‘Then I won’t do it again. I would not pain you for the wealth of this
+world—not even to have it always summer, instead of a dull, abominable,
+shivery season like this.’
+
+‘Gerald says it is lovely in Argyleshire; balmy and warm; almost too
+hot for walking over the hills.’
+
+‘He is enjoying himself, I suppose,’ said Daphne coldly.
+
+‘Yes; he is having capital sport.’
+
+‘Shooting those birds that make our dining-room smell so nasty every
+evening, and helping to stock Aunt Rhoda’s larder.’
+
+‘He does not intend to stay after the end of this month. He will be
+home early in October.’
+
+Daphne did not even affect to be interested. She was feeding Goldie,
+who was allowed to come in to luncheon when Sir Vernon was not in the
+way.
+
+‘I had a letter from Mrs. Turchill this morning,’ said Lina; ‘she is
+enjoying herself immensely at Torquay. Edgar is very attentive and
+devoted to her, going everywhere with her. He is a most affectionate
+son.’
+
+‘And a good son makes a good husband, doesn’t he, Lina? Is that idea
+at the bottom of your mind when you talk of his goodness to his very
+commonplace mother?’
+
+‘I don’t want to talk of him, Daphne, to any one who values him so
+little as you do.’
+
+‘But I value him very much—almost as much as I do Goldie—but not quite,
+not quite, my pet,’ she added reassuringly to the dog, lest he should
+be jealous. ‘I have missed him horribly; no one to tease; no one to
+talk nonsense with. You are so sensible that I could not afford to
+shock you by my absurdities; and Mr. Goring is so cynical that I fancy
+he is always laughing. I miss Edgar every hour of the day.’
+
+‘And yet——’
+
+‘And yet I don’t care one little straw for him—in the kind of way you
+care for Mr. Goring,’ said Daphne, with a sudden blush.
+
+Lina sighed and was silent. She had not abandoned all hope that Daphne
+would in time grow more warmly attached to the faithful swain, whose
+society she evidently missed sorely in these dull autumnal days, during
+which the only possible excitement was a box of new books from Mudie’s.
+
+‘More “Voyages to the North Pole”; more “Three Weeks on the Top
+of the Biggest Pyramid”; more “Memoirs of Philip of Macedon’s
+Private Secretary,”’ cried Daphne, sitting on the ground beside the
+newly-arrived box, and tossing all the instructive books on the carpet,
+after a contemptuous glance at their titles. ‘Here is Browning’s new
+poem, thank goodness! and a novel, “My Only Jo.” Told in the first
+person and present tense, no doubt; nice and light and lively. I think
+I’ll take that and Browning, if you don’t mind, Lina; and you shall
+have all the Travels and Memoirs.’
+
+With the help of novels and poetry, and long rambles even in the wild
+showery weather, waterproofed and booted against the storm, and wearing
+a neat little felt wide-awake which weather could not spoil, Daphne
+contrived to get through her life somehow while her faithful slave was
+away. Was it indeed he whom she missed so sorely? Was it his footfall
+which her ear knew so well; his step which quickened the beating of her
+heart, and brought the warm blood to her cheek? Was it his coming and
+going which so deeply stirred the current of her life? Life had been
+empty of delight for the last three weeks; but was it Edgar’s absence
+made the little world of South Hill so blank and dreary? In her heart
+of hearts Daphne knew too well that it was not. Yet Edgar had made an
+important element in her life. He had helped her, if not to forget,
+at least to banish thought. He had sympathised with all her frivolous
+pleasures, and made it easier for her to take life lightly.
+
+‘If I were once to be serious I should break my heart,’ she said to
+herself, as she sat curled up on the fluffy white rug by one of the
+morning-room windows, her thoughts straying off from ‘My Only Jo,’
+which was the most frothy of fashionable novels.
+
+Mrs. Turchill was so delighted with Torquay, in its increased towniness
+and shoppiness, its interesting Ritualistic services, at which it was
+agreeable to assist once in a way, however a well-regulated mind might
+disapprove all such Papistical innovations, that October had begun
+before she and her son returned to Hawksyard. Edgar had been glad to
+stay away. He shrank with a strange shyness from meeting Daphne; albeit
+he was always longing for her as the hart for water-brooks. He amused
+himself knocking about in his little yawl-rigged yacht, thinking of the
+girl he loved. Mrs. Turchill complained that he had grown selfish and
+inattentive. He rarely walked with her on the parade; he refused to
+listen to the town band; he went reluctantly to hear Miss Snevillici:
+and slumbered in his too-conspicuous front seat while that lady
+declaimed the Balcony Scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet.’
+
+‘If it were not for Deborah I should feel horribly lonely,’ complained
+Mrs. Turchill. ‘And it is not right that I should be dependent upon a
+servant for society.’
+
+Gerald had not yet returned. He had gone on a yachting expedition
+with an old college chum. He was enjoying the wild free life, and his
+letters to Madoline were full of fun and high spirits.
+
+‘Next year we shall be here together, perhaps,’ he wrote. ‘I think
+you would like the fun. It would be so new to you after the placid
+pleasures of South Hill. And what a yacht we would have! This I am now
+upon is a mere cockleshell to the ship I would build for my dear love.
+There should be room enough for you and all your pets—Fluff and the
+squirrel, your books, your piano, and for Daphne, too, if she would
+like to come; only she is such a wild young person that I should live
+in constant fear of her falling overboard.’
+
+Madoline read this passage to Daphne laughingly. ‘You see that he
+remembers you, dear. The thought of you enters into his plans for the
+future.’
+
+‘He is very kind: I am much obliged to him,’ Daphne answered icily.
+
+It was not the first time she had responded coldly to Madoline’s
+mention of her lover. Her sister felt the slight against her idol, and
+was deeply wounded.
+
+‘Daphne,’ she said in a voice that was faintly tremulous in spite of
+her effort to be calm, ‘you have said many little things lately—or
+perhaps it is hardly what you have said, but only your looks and
+tones—which make me think that you dislike Gerald.’
+
+‘Dislike him! No, that is impossible. He has all the attributes which
+make people admired and liked.’
+
+‘Yet I don’t think you like him.’
+
+‘It is not in my nature to like many people. I like Edgar. I love
+you, with all my heart and soul. Be content with that, darling,’ said
+Daphne, kneeling by Madoline’s side, resting the bright head, with its
+soft silken hair, on her shoulder—the face looking downward and half
+hidden.
+
+‘No; I cannot be content. I made up my mind that Gerald was to be as
+dear to you as a brother—as dear as the brother you lost might have
+been, had God spared him and made him all we could wish. And now you
+set up some barrier of false pride against him.’
+
+‘I don’t know about false pride. I can hardly be very fond of a man who
+ridicules me, and treats me like a child, or a plaything. Affection
+will scarcely thrive in an atmosphere of contempt.’
+
+‘Contempt! Why, Daphne, what can have put such an idea into your head?
+Gerald likes and admires you. If you knew how he praises your beauty,
+your fascinating ways! You would not have him praise you to your face,
+would you? My pet, I should be sorry to see you spoiled by adulation.’
+
+‘Do you suppose I want praise or flattery?’ cried Daphne angrily.
+‘I want to be respected. I want to be treated like a woman, not a
+child. I——Forgive me, Lina dearest. I daresay I am disagreeable and
+ill-tempered.’
+
+‘Only believe the truth, dear. Gerald has no thought of you that is
+not tender and flattering. If he teases you a little now and then it
+is only as a brother might tease you. He wishes you to think of him
+in every way as a brother. It always wounds me when you call him Mr.
+Goring.’
+
+‘I shall never call him anything else,’ said Daphne sullenly.
+
+‘And if you do not marry as soon as I do——’
+
+‘I shall never marry——’
+
+‘Dearest, forgive me for not believing that. If you are not married
+next year you will have a second home at the Abbey. Gerald and I have
+chosen the rooms we intend for you; the dearest little boudoir over the
+porch, with an oriel window, just such a room as will delight you.’
+
+‘You are all that is good: but I don’t suppose I shall be able often
+to take advantage of your kindness. When you are married it will be my
+duty to dance attendance upon papa, and to try and make him like me.
+I don’t suppose I shall ever succeed but I mean to make the effort,
+however unpleasant it may be to both of us.’
+
+‘My sweet one, you are sure to win his love. Who could help loving you?’
+
+‘My father has helped it all this time,’ answered Daphne, still moody
+and with downcast eyes.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Edgar and his mother stayed away till the third week in September.
+When they came back to Hawksyard cub-hunting was in full swing, and
+Mr. Turchill rose at five o’clock three mornings a week to ride to the
+kennels. He rode with two sets of hounds, making nothing of distance.
+He bought himself a fifth hunter—having four good ones already—which
+was naturally supposed to overtop all the rest in strength, pace, and
+beauty. His mother began to fear that the stables would be her son’s
+ruin.
+
+‘Three thousand a-year was considered a large income when your father
+and I were married,’ she said; ‘but it is a mere pittance now for a
+country gentleman in your position. We ought to be careful, Edgar.’
+
+‘Who said we were going to be careless, mother mine? I am sure you are
+a model among housewives,’ said Edgar lightly.
+
+‘You’ve taken on a new man in the stable, I hear, Edgar—to attend to
+your new horse, I suppose.’
+
+‘Only a new boy at fourteen bob a week, mother. We were rather
+short-handed.’
+
+‘Short-handed! With four men!’
+
+Edgar could not stop to debate the matter. It was nine o’clock, and he
+was eating a hurried breakfast before starting on his useful covert
+hack for Snitterfield, where the hounds were to meet. It was to be the
+first meet of the season, an occasion for some excitement. Pleasant to
+see all the old company, with a new face or two perhaps among them, and
+a sprinkling of new horses—young ones whose education had only just
+begun. Edgar was going to exhibit his new mare, an almost thoroughbred
+black, and was all aglow with pride at the thought of the admiration
+she would receive. He looked his best in his well-worn red coat, new
+buckskins, and mahogany tops.
+
+‘I hope you’ll be careful, Edgar,’ said his mother, hanging about him
+in the hall, ‘and that you won’t go taking desperate jumps with that
+new mare. She has a nasty vicious look in her hind legs; and yesterday,
+when I opened the stable-door to speak to Baker, she put back her ears.’
+
+‘A horse may do that without being an absolute fiend, mother. Black
+Pearl is the kindest creature in Christendom. Good-bye.’
+
+‘Dinner at eight, I suppose,’ sighed Mrs. Turchill, who preferred an
+earlier hour.
+
+‘Yes, if you don’t mind. It gives me plenty of time for a bath. Ta, ta.’
+
+He had swung himself on to the thick-set chestnut roadster, and was
+trotting merrily away on the other side of the drawbridge, before his
+mother had finished her regretful sigh. The groom had gone on before
+with Black Pearl. These hunting mornings were the only occasions on
+which Mr. Turchill forgot his disappointment. The keen delight of fresh
+air, a fast run, pleasant company, familiar voices, brushed away all
+dark thoughts. For the moment he lived only to fly across the level
+fields, in a country which seemed altogether changed from the scene of
+his daily walks and rides; all familiar things—hedges, bills, commons,
+brooks—taking a look of newness, as if he were galloping through a
+newly-invented world. For the moment he lived as the bird lives—a thing
+of life and motion, a creature too swift for thought or pain or care.
+Then, after the day’s hard riding, came the lazy homeward walk side
+by side with a friend, and friendly talk about horses and dogs and
+neighbours. Then a dinner for which even a lover’s appetite showed no
+sign of decay. Then pleasant exhaustion; a cigar; a nap; and a long
+night of dreamless rest.
+
+No doubt it was this relief afforded by the hunting season which saved
+Mr. Turchill from exhibiting himself in the dejected condition which
+Rosalind declared to be an essential mark of a lover. No lean cheek or
+sunken eye, neglected beard or sullen spirit, marked Edgar when he came
+to South Hill. He seemed so much at his ease, and had so much to tell
+about that first meet at Snitterfield, and the delightful run which
+followed it, that Daphne was confirmed in her idea that in affairs of
+the heart Mr. Turchill belonged to the weathercock species.
+
+‘If he could get over your rejection of him, you may suppose how easily
+he would get over mine,’ she said to her sister.
+
+Yet she was very glad to have Edgar back again: to be able to order
+him about, to beat him at billiards, or waltz with him in the dusky
+hall between five-o’clock tea and the dressing-bell, while Lina played
+for them in the morning-room. In this one accomplishment Daphne was
+teacher, and a most imperious mistress.
+
+‘If you expect me to be seen dancing with you at the Hunt Ball, you
+must improve vastly between this and January,’ she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+‘AND IN MY HERTE WONDREN I BEGAN.’
+
+
+For a man to waltz in the gloaming with a girl whom he passionately
+loves, and who has contemptuously rejected him, is a kind of pleasure
+too near the edge of pain to be altogether blissful. Yet Edgar came
+every non-hunting day to South Hill, and was always ready to dance to
+Daphne’s piping. He was her first partner since the little crabbed old
+French master at Asnières, who had taken a few turns with her now and
+then, fiddling all the time, in order to show his other pupils what
+dancing meant. He declared that Daphne was the only one of them all who
+had the soul of a dancer.
+
+‘_Elle est née sylphide._ She moves in harmony with the music; she is a
+part of the melody,’ he said, as he scraped away at the languishing Duc
+de Reichstadt valse, the tune to which our grandmothers used to revolve
+in the days when the newly imported waltz was denounced as an iniquity.
+
+The grand Hunt Ball, which took place only once in two years at
+Stratford Town Hall, was to be held in the coming January, and Sir
+Vernon had consented that Daphne should appear at this festivity,
+chaperoned by her aunt and accompanied by her elder sister. It was an
+assembly so thoroughly local that Mrs. Ferrers felt it a solemn duty to
+be present: even her parochial character, which to the narrow-minded
+might seem incongruous, made it, she asserted, all the more incumbent
+upon her to be there.
+
+‘A clergyman’s wife ought to show her interest in all innocent
+amusements,’ she said. ‘If there were any fear of doubtful people
+getting admitted, of course I would sooner cut off my feet than cross
+the threshold; but where the voucher system is so thoroughly carried
+out——’
+
+‘There are sure to be plenty of pretty girls,’ said the Rector, ‘and I
+believe there’s a capital card-room. I’ve a good mind to go with you.’
+
+‘If it were in summer, Duke, I should urge it on you as a duty; but in
+this severe weather the change from a hot room——’
+
+‘Might bring on my bronchitis. I think you’re right, Rhoda. And the
+champagne at these places is generally a doubtful brand, while of all
+earthly delusions and snares a ball-supper is the most hollow. But I
+should like to have seen Daphne at her first ball. I am very fond of
+little Daphne.’
+
+‘I am always pleased for you to be interested in my relations,’
+replied Mrs. Ferrers, with a sour look; ‘but I must say, of all the
+young people I ever had anything to do with, Daphne is the most
+unsatisfactory.’
+
+‘In what way?’ asked Mr. Ferrers, looking lazily up from his tea-cup.
+
+It was afternoon tea-time, and the husband and wife were sitting
+_tête-à-tête_ before the fire in the Rector’s snug study, where the old
+black oak shelves were full of the most delightful books, which he was
+proud to possess but rarely looked at—inside. The outsides, beautiful
+in tawny and crimson leather, tooled and gilded and labelled and
+lettered, regaled his eye in many a lazy reverie, when he reposed in
+his armchair, and watched the firelight winking and blinking at those
+treasuries of wit and wisdom.
+
+‘In what way is Daphne troublesome, my dear?’ repeated the Rector. ‘I
+am interested in the puss. I taught her her Catechism.’
+
+‘I wish you had taught her the spirit as well as the letter,’ retorted
+Mrs. Ferrers tartly. ‘The girl is an absolute pagan. After flirting
+with Edgar Turchill in a manner that would have endangered her
+reputation had she belonged to people of inferior position, she has the
+supreme folly to refuse him.’
+
+‘What you call folly may be her idea of wisdom,’ answered the Rector.
+‘She may do better than Turchill—a young man of excellent family, but
+with very humdrum surroundings, and a frightful dead-weight in that
+mother, who I believe has a life-interest in the estate which would
+prevent his striking out in any way till she is under the turf. Such
+a girl as Daphne should do better than Edgar Turchill. She is wise to
+wait for her chances.’
+
+‘How worldly you are, Marmaduke! It shocks me to hear such sentiments
+from a minister of the gospel.’
+
+‘My dear, he who was in every attribute a model for ministers of the
+gospel boasted that he was all things to all men. When I discuss
+worldly matters I talk as a man of the world. I think Daphne ought to
+make a brilliant marriage. She has the finest eyes I have seen for a
+long time—always excepting those which illuminate my own fireside,’ he
+added, smiling benignly on his wife.
+
+‘Oh, pray make no exception,’ she answered snappishly. ‘I never
+pretended to be a beauty; though my features are certainly more regular
+than Daphne’s. I am a genuine Lawford, and the Lawfords have had
+straight noses from time immemorial. Daphne takes after her unhappy
+mother.’
+
+‘Ah, poor thing!’ sighed the Rector. ‘She was a lovely young creature
+when Lawford brought her home.’
+
+‘Daphne resembles her to a most unfortunate degree,’ said Aunt Rhoda.
+
+‘A sad story,’ sighed the Rector; ‘a sad story.’
+
+‘I think it would better become us to forget it,’ said his wife.
+
+‘My love it was you who spoke of poor Lady Lawford.’
+
+‘Marmaduke, I am disgusted at the tone you take about her. Poor Lady
+Lawford indeed! I consider her quite the most execrable woman I ever
+heard of.’
+
+‘She was beautiful; men told her so, and she believed them. She was
+tempted; and she was weak. Execrable is a hard word, Rhoda. She never
+injured you.’
+
+‘She blighted my brother’s life. Do you suppose I can easily forgive
+that? You men are always ready to make excuses for a pretty woman. I
+heard of Colonel Kirkbank, the other day. Lady Hetheridge met him at
+Baden—a wreck. They say he is immensely rich. He has never married, it
+seems.’
+
+‘That at least is a grace in him. “His honour rooted in dishonour
+stood; and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”’
+
+‘You are in a sentimental mood this evening, Marmaduke,’ sneered Rhoda.
+‘One would suppose that you had been in love with my brother’s second
+wife.’
+
+‘She has been so long in her grave that I don’t think you and I need
+quarrel if I confess that I admired her. There is a look in Daphne’s
+face now she has grown up that recalls her mother almost painfully. I
+hope Todd won’t burn that pheasant, Rhoda. I’m afraid she is getting a
+little careless. The last was as dry as a stick.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Scotland made up for a chilly and inferior summer by an altogether
+superior autumn. The days were ever so much fairer and longer on that
+wild north coast than they were in Warwickshire; and tempted by the
+beauty of sky and sea, backed by the urgent desire of his bachelor
+friend, the skipper of the smart schooner-rigged yacht _Kelpie_, Gerald
+Goring stayed much longer than he had intended to stay; atoning, so far
+as he could atone, for his prolonged absence, by writing his betrothed
+the most delightful letters, and sending a weekly packet of sepia
+sketches, which reflected every phase of sea and sky, rock and hill. To
+describe these things with his brush was as easy to Gerald as it is to
+other men to describe with their pens.
+
+‘It is an idle dreamy life,’ he wrote. ‘When I am not shooting
+land-fowl on the hills, or water-fowl from my dingey, I sit on the
+deck and sketch, till I grow almost into a seavegetable—a zoophyte
+which contracts and expands with a faintly pleasurable sensation—and
+calls that life. I read no end of poetry—Byron, Shelley, Keats—and
+that book whose wisdom and whose beauty no amount of reading can
+ever dry up—Goethe’s “Faust.” I want no new books—the old ones are
+inexhaustible. Curiosity may tempt me to look at a new writer; but in
+an age of literary mediocrity I go back for choice to the Titans of
+the past. Do you think I am scornful of your favourites, Tennyson and
+Browning? No, love. They, too, are Titans; but we shall value them more
+when they have received the divine honours that can only come after
+death.
+
+‘I am longing to be with you, and yet I feel that I am doing myself
+a world of good in this rough open-air life. I was getting a little
+moped at the Abbey. The place is so big, and so dreary, like the palace
+of the Sleeping Beauty—waiting to wake into life and brightness at
+the coming of love and you. The lonely rooms are haunted by my dear
+mother’s image, and by the sense of my loss. When you come I shall be
+so happy in the present that the pain of past sorrow will be softened.
+
+‘I sit sketching these romantic caves—where we earn our dinner by
+shooting the innocent rock-pigeons—and thinking of you, and of my
+delight in showing you this coast next autumn.
+
+‘Yes, love, we will have a yacht. I know you are fond of the sea. Your
+sister is a fanatic in her love of the water. How she will delight in
+these islands!’
+
+He thought of Daphne sometimes, as he sat in the bow of the boat,
+lulled almost to slumber by the rise and fall of the waves gently
+lapping the hull. His brush fell idle across the little tin colour-box,
+and he gave himself up to listless reverie. How Daphne would love this
+free unfettered life: a life in which there were no formalities; no
+sitting prim and straight at an orderly dinner-table; no conventional
+sequence of everyday ceremonies in a hideous monotony. It was a roving
+gipsy life which must needs please that erratic soul.
+
+‘Poor little Daphne! It is strange that she and I don’t get on better,’
+he said to himself. ‘We were such capital friends at Fontainebleau.
+Perhaps the recollection of that day is in some way disagreeable to
+her. She has been very stand-offish to me ever since—except by fits and
+starts. There are times when she forgets to be formal; and then she is
+charming.’
+
+Yes; there had been times—times when all that was picturesque
+and poetical in her nature asserted itself, and when her future
+brother-in-law succumbed to the spell, and admired her just a little
+more warmly than he felt to be altogether well for his peace, or
+perchance for hers.
+
+Perhaps he, too, had been somewhat formal—had fenced himself round with
+forms and ceremonies—lest some lurking sentiment which he had never
+dared to analyse, or even to think about, should grow stronger. He
+wanted to be honest; he wanted to be true and loyal. But the lovely
+young face, so piquant, so entrancing in its exquisite girlishness,
+came across his fancies too often for perfect repose of conscience.
+The memory of those two summer days at Fontainebleau—idle, foolish,
+unconsidered hours—was an ever-present part of his mind. It was so
+small a thing; yet it haunted him. How much better it would have been,
+he thought, if Daphne had been more candid, had allowed him to speak
+freely of that innocent adventure! Concealment gave it a flavour of
+guilt. A hundred times he had been on the point of letting out the
+secret by this or that allusion, when Daphne’s blush and the quiver
+of Daphne’s lip had startled him into caution. This made a secret
+understanding between them in spite of his own desire to be honest; and
+it worried him to think that there should be any such hidden bond.
+
+Madoline was the love of his life, the hope and glory of his days. He
+had no doubt as to his feelings about her. From his boyhood he had
+admired, revered, and loved her. He was only three years her senior,
+and in their early youth the delicately-nurtured, carefully-educated
+girl, reared among grown-up people, and far in advance of her years,
+had seemed in all intellectual things the boy’s superior. Lady
+Geraldine was idle and self-indulgent; she petted and spoiled her
+son, but she taught him nothing. Had he not a private tutor—a young
+clergyman who preferred the luxurious leisure of the Abbey to the
+hard work of a curacy—and was not his education sufficiently provided
+for when this well-recommended young Oxonian had been engaged at
+a munificent salary? The young Oxonian was as fond of shooting,
+billiards, cricket, and boating as his pupil; so the greater part of
+Gerald’s early youth was devoted to these accomplishments; and it was
+only the boy’s natural aptitude for learning whatever he wished to
+learn which saved him from being a dunce. At fifteen he was transferred
+to Eton, where he found better cricketing and a better river than in
+Warwickshire.
+
+From Lady Geraldine the boy had received no bent towards high thoughts
+or a noble ambition. She loved him passionately, but with a love
+that was both weak and selfish. She would have had him educated at
+home, a boudoir sybarite, to lie on the Persian rug at her feet and
+read frivolous books in fine bindings; to sit by her side when she
+drove; to be pampered and idolised and ruined in body and soul. The
+father’s strong sense interfered to prevent this. Mr. Giles-Goring
+was no classic, and he was a self-taught mathematician, while the
+boy’s tutor had taken honours in both branches of learning; but he was
+clever enough to see that this luxurious home-education was a mockery,
+that the lad was being flattered by an obsequious tutor, and spoiled
+by a foolish mother. He sent the Oxonian about his business, and
+took the boy to Eton, not before Lady Geraldine had done him as much
+harm as a doting mother can do to a beloved son. She had taught him,
+unintentionally and unconsciously, perhaps, to despise his father. She
+had taught him to consider himself, by right of his likeness to her and
+his keen sympathy with all her thoughts and fancies and prejudices—a
+sympathy to which she had, as unconsciously, trained and schooled
+him—belonging to her class and not to his father’s. The low-born father
+was an accident in his life—a good endurable man, and to be respected
+(after a fashion) for his lowly worth, but spiritually, eclectically,
+æsthetically, of no kin with the son who bore his name, and who was to
+inherit, and perhaps waste, his hard-won wealth.
+
+The mother and son had a code of signals, little looks and subtle
+smiles, with which they communicated their ideas before the blunt
+plain-spoken father. Lady Geraldine never spoke against her husband:
+nor did she descend even in moments of confidence to vulgar ridicule.
+‘So like your father,’ she would say, with her languid smile, of any
+honest unconventional act or speech of Mr. Giles-Goring’s; and it must
+be confessed that Mr. Giles-Goring was one of those impulsive outspoken
+men who do somewhat exercise a wife’s patience. Lady Geraldine never
+lost her temper with him; she was never rude; she never overtly
+thwarted his wishes, or opposed his plans; but she shrugged her
+graceful shoulders, and lifted her delicately-pencilled eyebrows, and
+allowed her son to understand what an impassable gulf yawned between
+her, the daughter of a hundred earls—or at least half-a-dozen—and the
+self-made millionaire.
+
+Escaping from the stifling moral atmosphere of his mother’s boudoir,
+Gerald found his first ideas of a higher and a nobler life at South
+Hill. At the Abbey he had been taught to believe that there were two
+good things in the world, rank and money; but that even rank, the very
+flower of life, must droop and fade if not manured with gold. At South
+Hill he learned to think lightly of both, and to aspire to something
+better than either. For the sake of being praised and admired by
+Madoline he worked, almost honestly, at Eton and Oxford. She kindled
+his ambition, and, inspired by her, his youth and talent blossomed into
+poetry. He sat up late at nights writing impassioned verse. He dashed
+off wild stanzas in the ‘To Thyrza’ style, when his brain was fired by
+the mild orgies of a modern wine, and the fiercer rapture of a modern
+bear-fight. And Madoline was his only Thyrza. He was not a man who can
+find his Egeria in every street. For a little while he fancied that it
+was in him to be a second Byron; that the divine breath inflated his
+lungs; that he had but to strike on the cithara for the divine accords
+to come. He strummed cleverly enough upon the sacred strings, spoiled
+a good deal of clean paper, and amused himself considerably. Then,
+failing—in consequence of an utter absence of the critical faculty—to
+win the prize for English verse, he turned his back upon the Muses, and
+henceforward spoke with ridicule of his poetic adolescence. Still the
+Muse had exercised her elevating influence; and, inspired by her and by
+Madoline, Gerald Goring had learned to despise those lesser aims which
+his mother had held before him as the sublimities of life.
+
+He was fond of art, and had a marked talent for painting; but as he
+never extended his labours or his studies beyond the amateur’s easy
+course, he was not likely to rise above the amateur’s level. Why should
+a man who is sure to inherit a million submit to the drudgery of severe
+technical training in order to take the bread out of the mouths of
+painters who must needs live by their art? Gerald painted a little, now
+landscape, now figure, as the spirit moved him; sculptured a little;
+poetised a little; set a little song of his own to music now and then
+to please Lina; and was altogether accomplished and interesting. But he
+would have liked to be great, to have had his name bandied about for
+praise or blame upon the lips of men; and it irked him somewhat to know
+and feel that he was not of the stuff which makes great men; or, in
+other words, that he entirely lacked that power of sustained industry
+which can alone achieve greatness. For his own inward satisfaction,
+and for Lina’s sake, he would have liked to distinguish himself. But
+the pathway of life had been made fatally smooth for him; it lay
+through a land of flowery pastures and running brooks, a happy valley
+of all earthly delights; and how could any man be resolute enough to
+turn aside from all sensuous pleasures to climb rugged rocky hills in
+pursuit of some perchance unattainable spiritual delight? There was
+so much that wealth could give him, that it would have been hardly
+natural for Gerald Goring to live laborious days for the sake of the
+one thing which wealth could not give. He had just that dreamy poetic
+temperament which can clothe sensual joys with the glory and radiance
+of the intellectual. Politics, statecraft, he frankly detested; science
+he considered an insult to poetry. He would have liked the stir and
+excitement, the fever and glory of war; but not the daily dry-as-dust
+work of a soldier’s life, or the hardships of campaigning. He was not
+an unbeliever, but his religious belief was too vague for a Churchman.
+Having failed to distinguish himself as a poet, and being too idle to
+succeed as a painter, he saw no royal road to fame open to him; and so
+was content to fall back from the race, and enjoy the delicious repose
+of an utterly aimless life. He pictured to himself a future in which
+there should be no crumpled rose-leaf; a wife in all things perfect,
+fondly loved, admired, respected; children as lovely as a poet’s dream
+of childhood; an existence passed amidst the fairest scenes of earth,
+with such endless variety of background as unlimited wealth can give.
+He would not, like Tiberius, build himself a dozen villas upon one
+rock-bound island; but he would make his temporary nest in every valley
+and by every lake, striking his tents before ever satiety could dull
+the keen edge of enjoyment.
+
+Nor should this ideal life, though aimless, be empty of good works.
+Madoline should have _carte blanche_ for the gratification of her
+benevolent schemes, great or small, and he would be ready to help
+her with counsel and sympathy; provided always that he were not
+called upon to work, or to put himself _en rapport_ with professional
+philanthropists—a most useful class, no doubt, but obnoxious to him as
+a lover of ease and pleasure.
+
+He had looked forward with placid self-satisfaction to this life ever
+since his engagement—and indeed for some time before that solemn
+betrothal. From his boyhood he had loved Madoline, and had believed
+himself beloved by her. Betrothal followed almost as a matter of
+course. Lady Geraldine had spoken of the engagement as a settled thing,
+ever so long before the lovers had bound themselves each to each. She
+had told Lina that she was to be her daughter, the only girl she could
+love as her son’s wife; and when Gerald was away at Oxford, Lina had
+spent half her life at Goring with his mother, talking about him,
+worshipping him, as men are worshipped sometimes by women infinitely
+above them.
+
+From the time of his engagement—nay, from the time when first his
+boyish heart recognised a mistress—Gerald’s affection for Madoline had
+known no change or diminution. Never had his soul wavered. Nor did it
+waver in his regard and reverence for her now, as he sat on the sunlit
+deck of the _Kelpie_ in this fair autumn weather, his brush lying idle
+by his side, his thoughts perplexed and wandering. Yet there was a
+jar in the harmony of his life; a dissonant interval somewhere in the
+music. The thought of Daphne troubled him. He had a suspicion that she
+was not happy. Gay and sparkling as she was at times, she was prone to
+fits of silence and sullenness unaccountable in so young a creature:
+unless it were that she cherished some secret grief, and that the
+hidden fox so many of us carry had his tooth in her young breast.
+
+He was no coxcomb, not in the least degree inclined to suppose that
+women had a natural bent towards falling in love with him: yet in this
+case he was troubled by the suspicion that Daphne’s stand-offishness
+was not so much a token of indifference or dislike, as the sign of a
+deeper feeling. She had been so variable in her manner to him. Now all
+sweet, and anon all sour; now avoiding him, now showing but too plainly
+her intense delight in his presence—by subtlest signs; by sudden
+blushes; by loveliest looks; by faintly quivering lip of trembling
+hand; by the swift lighting up of her whole face at his coming; by the
+low veiled tones of her soft sweet voice. Yes; by too many a sign and
+token—fighting her hardest to hide her secret all the time—she had
+given him ground for suspecting that she loved him.
+
+He recalled, with unspeakable pain, her pale distressed face that
+day of their first meeting at South Hill; the absolute horror in her
+widely-opened eyes; the deadly coldness of her trembling hand. Why had
+she called her boat by that ridiculous name: and why had she been so
+anxious to cancel it? The thought of those things disturbed his peace.
+She was so lovely, so innocent, so wild, so wilful.
+
+‘My bright spirit of the woods,’ he said to himself, ‘I should like
+your fate to be happy. And yet—and yet—’
+
+He dared not shape his thought further, but the question was in his
+mind: ‘Would I like her fate to be far apart from mine?’
+
+Why had she rejected Edgar Turchill, a man so honestly, so obviously
+devoted to her?—able, one might suppose, to sympathise with all her
+girlish fancies, to gratify every whim.
+
+‘She ought to like him; she must be made to like him,’ he said to
+himself, his heart suddenly aglow with virtuous, almost heroical
+resolve.
+
+His heart had thrilled that night in the shadow of the walnut boughs
+when he heard Daphne’s contemptuous rejection of her lover. He had
+been guiltily glad. And yet he was ready to do his duty: he was eager
+to play the mediator, and win the girl for that true-hearted lover. He
+meant to be loyal.
+
+‘Poor Daphne!’ he sighed. ‘Her cradle was shadowed by a guilty mother’s
+folly. She had been cheated out of her father’s love. She need have
+something good in this life to make amends for all she has lost. Edgar
+would make an admirable husband.’
+
+The _Kelpie_ turned her nose towards home next day; and soon Gerald was
+dreamily watching the play of sunbeam and shadow on the heathery slopes
+above the Kyles of Bute, very near Greenock, and the station and the
+express train that was to carry him home. He turned his back almost
+reluctantly on the sea life, the unfettered bachelor habits. Though he
+longed to see Madoline again, almost as fondly as he had longed for her
+four months ago when he was leaving Bergen, yet there was a curious
+indefinable pain mingled with the lover’s yearning. An image thrust
+itself between him and his own true love; a haunting shape was mingled
+with all his dreams of the future.
+
+‘Pray God she may marry soon, and have children, and get matronly and
+dull and stupid!’ he said to himself savagely; ‘and then I shall forget
+the dryad of Fontainebleau.’
+
+He travelled all night and got to Stratford early in the afternoon.
+He had given no notice of his coming, either at the Abbey or South
+Hill, and his first visit was naturally to the house that held his
+betrothed. His limbs were cramped and stiffened by the long journey,
+and he despatched his valet and his portmanteau to Goring in a fly, and
+walked across the fields to South Hill. It was a long walk and he took
+his time about it, stopping now and then to look somewhat wistfully at
+the brown river, on whose breast the scattered leaves were drifting.
+The sky was dull and gray, with only faint patches of wintry sunlight
+in the west; the atmosphere was heavy; and the year seemed ever so much
+older here than in Scotland.
+
+He passed Baddesley and Arden, with only a glance across the smooth
+lawn at the Rectory, where the china-asters were in their glory, and
+the majolica vases under the rustic verandah made bright spots of
+colour in the autumn gloom. Then, instead of taking the meadow-path
+to South Hill, he chose the longer way, and followed the windings of
+the Avon, intending to let himself into the South Hill grounds by the
+little gate near Daphne’s boat-house.
+
+He was within about a quarter of a mile of the boat-house when he saw
+a spot of scarlet gleaming amidst the shadows of the rustic roof. The
+boat-house was a thatched erection of the Noah’s Ark pattern, and the
+front was open to the water. Below this thatched gable-end, and on a
+level with the river, showed the vivid spot of red. Gerald quickened
+his pace unconsciously, with a curious eagerness to solve the mystery
+of that bit of colour.
+
+Yes; it was as he had fancied. It was Daphne, seated alone and dejected
+on the keel of her upturned boat. The yellow collie darted out and
+leapt up at him, growling and snapping, as he drew near her. Daphne
+looked at him—or he so fancied—with a piteous half-beseeching gaze. She
+was very pale, and he thought she looked wretchedly ill.
+
+‘Have you been ill?’ he asked eagerly, as they shook hands. ‘Quiet, you
+mongrel!’ to the suspicious Goldie.
+
+‘Never was better in my life,’ she answered briskly.
+
+‘Then your looks belie you. I was afraid you had been seriously ill.’
+
+‘Don’t you think if I had Lina would have mentioned it to you in a
+postscript, or a _nota bene_, or something?’
+
+‘Of course.’
+
+‘I detest cold weather, and I am chilled to the bone, in spite of this
+thick shawl,’ she answered lightly, glancing at the scarlet wrap which
+had caught Gerald’s eye from afar.
+
+‘I wonder you choose such a spot as this for your afternoon
+meditations. It is certainly about the dampest and chilliest place you
+could find.’
+
+‘I did not come here to meditate, but to read,’ answered Daphne. ‘I
+have got Browning’s new poem, and it requires a great deal of hard
+thinking before one can quite appreciate it; and if I tell you that
+Aunt Rhoda is in the drawing-room, and means to stick there till
+dinner-time, you will not require any further reason for my being here.’
+
+‘That’s dreadful. Yet I must face the gorgon. I am dying to see Lina.’
+
+‘Naturally; and she will be enraptured at your return,’ answered Daphne
+in her most natural manner. ‘She has been expecting you every day i’
+the hour.’
+
+‘“For in a minute there are many days”—Shakespeare.’
+
+‘Thank God! I don’t object to the bard of Avon half so strongly now.
+I have been in a country where everybody quotes an uncouth rhymester
+whom they call Bobbie Bairrns. Shakespeare seems almost civilised in
+comparison. Will you walk up to the house with me?’
+
+She looked down at her open book. She had not been reading when he came
+unawares upon her solitude. He had seen that; just as surely as he had
+seen the faint convulsive movement of her throat, the start, the pallor
+that marked her surprise at his approach. He had acquired a fatal habit
+of watching and analysing her emotions; and it seemed to him that she
+had brightened since his coming, that new light and colour had returned
+to her face; almost as you may see the revival of a flower that has
+drooped in the drought, and which revivifies under the gentle summer
+rain.
+
+She looked at her book doubtfully, as if she would like to say no.
+
+‘You had better come with me. It is nearly tea-time, and I know you are
+dying for a cup of tea. I never knew a woman that wasn’t.’
+
+‘Exhausted nature tells me that it is tea-time. Yes; I suppose I had
+better come.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+‘LOVE WOL NOT BE CONSTREINED BY MAISTRIE.’
+
+
+A man who lives within easy reach of two good packs of fox-hounds, and
+in a fair hunting country on the very edge of the shires, can hardly
+mope, albeit he may feel that, in a general way, his heart is broken.
+Thus it was with Edgar Turchill, who hunted four days a week, and came
+to South Hill on the off-days to suffer and enjoy all those hot fits
+and cold fits, those desperate delights plucked from the jaws of pain,
+which a man feels when he adores a girl who does not care a straw
+for him. He had been rejected, even with contumely, as it seemed to
+him: yet so dearly did he delight in Daphne’s society that if he were
+destined never to win her for his own, the next best blessing he asked
+from Fate was to be allowed to dangle about her for ever—to fetch and
+carry, to be snubbed, and laughed at, and patronised, as it pleased her
+wilful humour.
+
+The autumn and early winter were mild—a capital season for hunting.
+
+‘What selfish creatures you sporting men are!’ cried Daphne one
+morning, looking gloomily out at the gloomy November day; ‘so long as
+you can go galloping over the muggy fields after innocent foxes you
+don’t care how dreary the world is for other people. We want a hard
+frost, for then we might have some skating on the pond. I wish the Avon
+would freeze, so that we could skate to Tewkesbury.’
+
+‘I daresay we shall have plenty of hard weather in January,’ said Edgar
+apologetically. It was one of his off-days, and he had ridden over to
+South Hill directly after luncheon. ‘You ought to hunt, Daphne.’
+
+‘Of course I ought; but Sir Vernon does not see it in the same light.
+When I mildly suggested that I thought you wouldn’t mind lending me a
+horse—’
+
+‘Mind!’ cried Edgar. ‘That little mare of mine would carry you to
+perfection; and she’s so clever you’d have nothing to do but to sit
+upon her.’
+
+‘Exactly. It would be a foretaste of paradise. But at my hinting such a
+possibility my father gave me a look that almost annihilated me.’
+
+‘You may be more independently situated next season,’ suggested Mr.
+Goring, looking up from the billiard-table, where he was amusing
+himself with a few random strokes while Madoline was putting on her hat
+and jacket for a rustic ramble. ‘You may have your own stable, perhaps,
+and a nice sporting husband to look after it for you.’
+
+Daphne reddened angrily at the suggestion; while poor Edgar put on his
+sheepish look, and took refuge at the billiard-table.
+
+‘Are you coming out for a walk, Empress?’ asked Gerald carelessly.
+
+‘I don’t know. It’s such dreary work prowling about a wintry landscape.
+I think I shall stay at home and read.’
+
+‘You’d better come,’ pleaded Edgar, feeling that he would not be
+allowed the perilous bliss of a _tête-à-tête_ afternoon with her, and
+that, if such bliss were permissible, the pleasure would be mixed with
+too deep a pain. Out in the fields and lanes, with Goring and Madoline,
+he might enjoy her society.
+
+She half consented to go, and then, discovering that Madoline was going
+to make some calls, changed her mind.
+
+‘I’ll go to my room and finish my third volume,’ she said.
+
+‘What a misanthrope you are, Daphne—a female Timon! I think I shall
+call you Timonia henceforward,’ retorted Gerald.
+
+‘When it is a question of making ceremonious afternoon visits, I rather
+hate my fellow-creatures,’ replied Daphne, with charming frankness.
+‘The nicest people one knows are not half so nice as the figments of
+fancy one meets in a book; and if the book-person waxes stupid, we can
+shut him up—which one can’t do to a living friend.’
+
+So Daphne wished Mr. Turchill good-day, and went off to her own
+den—the pretty chintz-draperied bedroom, with its frivolities and
+individualities in the way of furniture and ornament, and its
+privileged solitude.
+
+Edgar, feeling that he might be a nuisance to the other two if he
+offered to accompany them, prepared to take his leave, yet with a
+lingering hope that Madoline would ask him to remain.
+
+Her kindness divined his wish, and she asked him to stay to dinner.
+
+‘You’re very kind,’ he faltered, having dined at South Hill once in
+the current week, and sorely afraid that he was degenerating into a
+sponge, ‘but I’ve got a fellow to see at Warwick; I shall have to dine
+with him. But if you’ll let me come back in the evening for a game at
+billiards?’
+
+‘Let you? Why, Edgar, you know my father is always glad to see you.’
+
+‘He is very good—only—I’m afraid of becoming a nuisance. I can’t help
+hanging about the place.’
+
+‘We are always pleased to have you here—all of us.’
+
+Edgar thanked her warmly. He had fallen into a dejected condition;
+fancying himself of less account than the rest of men since Daphne had
+spurned him; a creature to be scorned and trampled under foot. Nor did
+Daphne’s easy kindness give him any comfort. She had resumed her tone
+of sisterly friendship. She seemed to forget that he had ever proposed
+to her. She was serenely unconscious that he was breaking his heart for
+her. Why could he not get himself killed, or desperately hurt in the
+hunting-field, so that she might be sorry for him? He was almost angry
+with his horses for being such clever jumpers, and never putting his
+neck in peril. A purl across a bullfinch, a broken collar-bone, might
+melt that obdurate heart. And a man may get through life very well with
+a damaged collar-bone.
+
+‘I’m afraid the collar-bone wouldn’t be enough,’ mused Edgar. ‘It
+doesn’t sound romantic. A broken arm, worn in a sling, might be of some
+use.’
+
+He would have suffered anything, hazarded anything, to improve his
+chances. He tried to lure Daphne to Hawksyard again; tempting her with
+the stables, the dogs, the poultry-yard; but it was no use. She had
+always some excuse for declining his or his mother’s invitations. She
+would not even accompany Lina when she went to call upon Mrs. Turchill.
+She had an idea that Edgar was in the habit of offering his hand and
+heart to every young lady visitor.
+
+‘He made such an utter idiot of himself the night we dined there,’ she
+said to Lina. ‘I shall never again trust myself upon his patrimonial
+estate. On neutral ground I haven’t the least objection to him.’
+
+‘Daphne, is it kind to speak of him like that, when you know that he
+was thoroughly in earnest?’
+
+‘He was thoroughly in earnest about you before. True love cannot change
+like that.’
+
+‘Yet I am convinced that he is true, Daphne,’ Lina answered seriously.
+
+Autumn slipped into winter. There was a light frost every night, and
+in the misty mornings the low meadows glittered whitely with a thin
+coating of rime, which vanished with those early mists. There was no
+weather cold enough to curdle the water in the shallow pond yonder by
+the plantation, or to stop Lord Willoughby’s hounds. Daphne sighed in
+vain for the delight of skating.
+
+Christmas at South Hill was not a period of exuberant mirth. Ever
+since his second wife’s death Sir Vernon Lawford had held himself as
+much aloof from county society as he conveniently could, without being
+considered either inhospitable or eccentric. There was a good deal
+done for the poor, in a very quiet way, by Madoline, and the servants
+were allowed to enjoy themselves; but of old-fashioned festivity
+there was none. Mr. and Mrs. Ferrers were asked to dine on Christmas
+Day. Aunt Rhoda suggested that they should be asked, and accepted the
+invitation in advance; in order, as she observed, that the bond of
+family union might be strengthened by genial intercourse upon that
+sacred anniversary. Gerald was of course to be at South Hill, where at
+all times he spent more of his waking hours than at Goring Abbey. Edgar
+had spoken so dolefully of the dulness of a Christmas Day at Hawksyard
+that Madoline had been moved by pity to suggest that Mrs. Turchill and
+her son might be invited to the family feast.
+
+‘That will make it a party,’ said Sir Vernon, when his daughter pleaded
+for this grace, ‘and I am not well enough to stand a party.’
+
+He was not well. Of that fact there could be no doubt. He had been
+given to hypochondriacal fancies for the last five years, but there was
+a certain amount of fact underlying these fancies. The effeminately
+white hand was growing more transparent; the capricious appetite was
+more difficult to tempt; the slow promenade on the garden terrace was
+growing slower; the thin face was more drawn; the aquiline nose was
+sharper in outline. There was a chronic complaint of some obscure kind,
+vaguely described by a London specialist, and dimly understood by the
+family doctor, which must eventually shorten the baronet’s life; but
+his mind was so vigorous and unbending, his countenance so stern, his
+manner so uncompromising, that it was difficult to believe that Death
+had set his mark upon him. To his elder daughter alone he revealed the
+one tender feeling left in him—and that was his very real affection for
+herself; a love that was chastened and poetised by his reverent and
+regretful memory of her mother.
+
+‘Dear father, it need not be a party because of the Turchills. Edgar is
+like one of ourselves, and Mrs. Turchill is so very quiet.’
+
+‘Ask them, Lina, ask them, if it will be any pleasure to you.’
+
+‘I think it will please Edgar. He says Hawksyard is so dreary at
+Christmas.’
+
+‘If people had not set up a fictitious idea of Christmas gaiety, they
+would not complain of the season being dull,’ said Sir Vernon somewhat
+impatiently. ‘That notion of unlimited junketing doesn’t come from any
+real religious feeling. Peace on earth and goodwill towards men doesn’t
+mean snapdragon and childish foolery. It is a silly myth of the Middle
+Ages, which sticks like a burr to the modern mind.’
+
+‘It is a pleasant idea that kindred and old friends should meet at that
+sacred time,’ argued Lina gently.
+
+‘Yes, if kindred in a general way could meet without quarrelling.
+That there should be a good deal done for the poor at Christmas I can
+understand and approve. It is the central point of winter; and then
+there is the Divine association which beautifies every gift. And that
+children should look forward to Christmas as an extra birthday in every
+nursery is a pretty fancy enough. But that men and women of the world
+should foregather and pretend to be fonder of one another on that day
+than at any other season is too hollow a sham for my patience.’
+
+Madoline wrote a friendly invitation to Mrs. Turchill, and gave her
+note to Edgar to carry home that evening.
+
+‘It’s awfully good of you,’ he said ruefully, when she told him the
+purport of her letter, ‘but I’m afraid it won’t answer. Mother stands
+on her dignity about Christmas Day; and I don’t think wild horses
+would drag her away from her own dining-room. I shall have to dine
+_tête-à-tête_ with her, poor old dear; and we shall sit staring at the
+oak panelling, and pretending to enjoy the plum-pudding made according
+to the old lady’s own particular recipe handed down by her grandmother.
+There has been an agreeable sameness about our Christmas dinner for
+the last ten years. It is as solemn as a Druidical sacrifice. I could
+almost fancy that mother had been out in the woods at daybreak cutting
+mistletoe with a golden sickle.’
+
+Edgar was correct in his idea of his mother’s reply. Mrs. Turchill
+wrote with much ceremony and politeness that, delighted as she and her
+son would have been to accept so gratifying an invitation, she must on
+principle reluctantly decline it. She never had dined away from her
+own house on Christmas Day, and she never would. She considered it a
+day upon which families should gather round their own firesides, etc.,
+etc., etc., and remained, with affectionate regards, etc.
+
+‘How can a family of two gather round the fireside?’ asked Edgar
+dolefully. ‘The dear old mother writes rank nonsense.’
+
+‘Don’t be down-hearted, Turchill,’ said Gerald. ‘Perhaps by Christmas
+twelvemonth you may be a family of three; and the year after that a
+family of four; and the year after that, five. Who knows? Time brings
+all good things.’
+
+‘I am just as grateful to you, Madoline, as if mother had accepted,’
+said Edgar, ignoring his friend’s speech, though he blushed at its
+meaning. ‘It will be ineffably dreary. If the old lady should go to
+bed extra early—she sometimes does on Christmas Day—I might ride over,
+just—just——’
+
+‘In time for a rattling good game of billiards,’ interjected Gerald.
+‘Lina and I are improving. You and Daphne needn’t give us more than
+twenty-five in fifty.’
+
+‘I’ll have a horse ready saddled. Mother likes me to read some of the
+verses in the “Christian Year” to her after tea. I’m afraid I’m not a
+good reader, for Keble and I always send her to sleep.’
+
+‘Be particularly monotonous on this occasion,’ said Daphne, ‘and come
+over in time for a match.’
+
+‘You wouldn’t be shocked if I came in as late as ten o’clock?’
+
+‘I mean to sit up till two,’ protested Daphne. ‘It is my first
+Christmas at home, since I was in the nursery. It must be a
+Shakespearian Christmas. We’ll have a wassail bowl: roasted apples
+bobbing about in warm negus, or something of that kind. I shall copy
+out some mediæval recipes for Spicer. Come as late as you like, Edgar.
+Papa is sure to go to bed early. Christmas will have a soporific effect
+upon him, as well as upon Mrs. Turchill, no doubt; and the Ferrers
+people will go when he retires; and we can have no end of fun in the
+billiard-room, where not a mortal can hear us.’
+
+‘You seem to be providing for a night of riot—a regular orgy—something
+almost as dissipated as Nero’s banquet on the lake of Agrippa,’ said
+Gerald, laughing at her earnestness.
+
+‘Why should not one be merry for once in one’s life?’
+
+‘Why indeed?’ cried Gerald, ‘_Vogue la galère_.
+
+    “Forget me not, en _vogant la galère_.”
+
+There’s a line from an early English poet for you, my Shakespearian
+student.’
+
+Christmas Day was not joyless. Daphne, so fitful in her mirth, so
+sudden in her intervals of gloom—periods of depression which Sir
+Vernon, Aunt Rhoda, and Madoline’s confidential maid and umquhile nurse
+Mowser, stigmatised as sulks—was on this occasion all sunshine.
+
+‘I have made up my mind to be happy,’ she said at breakfast; which
+meal she and Madoline were enjoying alone in the bright cheery room,
+the table gay with winter flowers and old silver, a wood fire burning
+merrily in the bright brass grate. ‘Even my father’s coldness shall
+not freeze me. Last Christmas Day I was eating my heart at Asnières,
+and envying that vulgar Dibb, whose people had had her sent home, and
+hoping savagely that she would be ever so sick in crossing the Channel.
+There I was in that dreary tawdry school-room, with half-a-dozen
+mahogany-coloured girls from Toulon, and Toulouse, and Carcassonne; and
+now I am at home and with you, and I mean to be happy. Discontent shall
+not come near me to-day. And you will taste my wassail bowl, won’t you,
+Lina?’
+
+‘Yes, dear, if it isn’t quite too nasty.’
+
+Lina had given her younger sister license for any kind of mediæval
+experiments, in conjunction with Mrs. Spicer; and there had been
+much consultation of authorities—Knight, and Timbs, and Washington
+Irving—and a good deal of messing in the spacious still-room, with a
+profligate consumption of lemons and sherry, and spices and russet
+apples. With the dinner at which her father and the Rectory people
+were to assist, Daphne ventured no interference; but she had planned a
+Shakespearian refection in the billiard-room at midnight—if they could
+only get rid of Aunt Rhoda, whose sense of propriety was so strong that
+she might perhaps insist upon staying till the two young men had taken
+their departure.
+
+‘I wish we could have old Spicer in to matronise the party,’ said
+Daphne. ‘She looks lovely in her Sunday evening gown. She would
+sit smiling benevolently at us till she dropped asleep; instead of
+contemplating us as if she thought the next stage of our existence
+would be a lunatic asylum, as Aunt Rhoda generally does when we are
+cheerful.’
+
+‘I’m afraid you must put up with Aunt Rhoda to-night, Daphne,’ answered
+Madoline. ‘She has suggested that she and the Rector should have the
+Blue Room, as the drive home might bring on his bronchitis.’
+
+‘His bronchitis, indeed!’ cried Daphne. ‘He appropriates the complaint
+as if nobody else had ever had it. So they are going to stay the night!
+Of all the cool proceedings I ever heard of that is about the coolest.
+And Aunt Rhoda is one of those people who are never sleepy. She will
+sit us out, however late we are. Never mind. The banquet will be all
+the more classical and complete. Aunt Rhoda will be the skeleton.’
+
+Daphne contrived to be happy all day, in spite of Mrs. Ferrers, who
+was particularly ungracious to her younger niece, while she was lavish
+of compliments and pretty speeches to the elder. The faithful slave
+Edgar was absent on duty—going to church twice with his mother; dining
+with her; devoted to her altogether, or as much as he could be with
+a heart that longed to be elsewhere. But Daphne hardly missed him.
+Gerald Goring was in high spirits, full of life and talk and fun, as
+if he too had made up his mind that this great day in the Christian
+calendar should be a day of rejoicing for him. They all went to church
+together in the morning, and admired the decorations, which owed all
+their artistic beauty to Madoline’s taste, and were in a large measure
+the work of her own industrious fingers. They joined reverently in the
+Liturgy, and listened patiently to the Rector’s sermon, in which he
+aired a few of those good old orthodox truisms which have been repeated
+time out of mind by rural incumbents upon Christmas mornings.
+
+After luncheon they all three went on a round of visits to Madoline’s
+cottagers—those special, old-established families to whose various
+needs, intellectual and corporeal, she had ministered from her early
+girlhood, and who esteemed a Christmas visit from Miss Lawford as the
+highest honour and privilege of the year. It was pleasant to look in at
+the tidy little keeping-rooms, where the dressers shone with a bright
+array of crockery, and the hearths were so neatly swept, and the pots
+and pans and brass candlesticks on the chimney-piece, and the little
+black-framed scriptural pictures, were all decorated with sprigs of ivy
+and holly. Pleasant the air of dinner and dessert which pervaded every
+house. Daphne had a basket of toys for the children; a basket which
+Gerald insisted upon carrying, looking into it every now and then, and
+affecting an intense curiosity as to the contents. The sky was dark,
+save for one low red streak above the ragged edge of the wooded lane,
+when they went back to afternoon tea: and what a comfortable change it
+was from the wintry world outside to Madoline’s flowery morning-room,
+heavy with the scent of hyacinths and Parma violets, and bright with
+blazing logs! The low Japanese tea-table was drawn in front of the
+fire, and the basket-chairs stood ready for the tea-drinkers.
+
+‘I was afraid Aunt Rhoda would be here to tea,’ said Daphne, sinking
+into her favourite seat on the fender-stool, in the shadow of the
+draped mantelpiece. ‘Is it not delicious to have this firelight hour
+all to ourselves? I always feel that just this time—this changeful
+light—stands apart from the rest of our lives. Our thoughts and fancies
+are all different somehow. They seem to take the rosy colour out of the
+fire; they are dim and dreamy and full of change, like the shadows on
+the wall. _We_ are different. Just now I feel as if I had not a care.’
+
+‘And have you many cares at other times?’ asked Gerald scoffingly.
+
+‘A few.’
+
+‘The fear that your ball-dress may not fit; or that some clumsy
+fox-hunting partner may smash the ivory fan which Lina gave you
+yesterday.’
+
+‘Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,’ answered Daphne
+sententiously. ‘Do you think, because I live in a fine house, and have
+food and raiment found for me, that I do not know the meaning of care?’
+
+‘Well, I should fancy there is a long way between your comprehension of
+the word and that of a Whitechapel seamstress: a widow, with five small
+children to keep, and a lodging to pay, upon the produce of her needle,
+with famine or the workhouse staring her in the face.’
+
+‘It is the hour for telling ghost-stories,’ exclaimed Daphne, kneeling
+at her sister’s side to receive her cup and saucer, and trifling
+daintily with the miniature Queen Anne tongs as she helped herself to
+sugar. ‘Lina, tell us the story of this house. It ought to be haunted.’
+
+‘I am thankful to say I have never heard of any ghosts,’ answered
+Madoline. ‘Every house that has been lived in fifty years must have
+some sad memories; but our dead do not come back to us, except in our
+dreams.’
+
+‘Mr. Goring, I insist upon a ghost-story,’ said Daphne. ‘On this
+particular day—at this particular hour—in this delicious half-light, a
+story of some kind must be told.’
+
+‘I delight in ghost-stories—good grim old German legends,’ answered
+Gerald languidly, looking deliciously comfortable in the depths of an
+immense armchair, so low that it needed the dexterity of a gymnast to
+enable man or woman to get in or out of it gracefully—a downy-cushioned
+nest when one was there. ‘I adore phantoms, and fiends, and the whole
+shopful; but I never could remember a story in my life.’
+
+‘You must tell one to-night,’ cried Daphne eagerly. ‘It need not be
+ghostly. A nice murder would do—a grisly murder. My blood begins to
+turn cold in advance.’
+
+‘I am sorry to disappoint you,’ said Gerald; ‘but although I have made
+a careful study of all the interesting murders of my age I could never
+distinctly remember details. I should get hideously mixed if I tried
+to relate the circumstances of a famous crime. I should confound Rush
+with Palmer, the Mannings with the Greenacres; put the pistol into the
+hand that used the knife; give the dagger to the man who pinned his
+faith on the bowl. Not to be done, Daphne. I am no _raconteur_. You
+or Lina had better amuse me. One of you can tell me a story—something
+classical—John Gilpin, or the Old Woman with her Pig.’
+
+‘John Gilpin! a horridly cheerful singsong ballad—and in such a
+fantastic dreamy light as this! I wonder you have not more sense of the
+fitness of things. Besides, it is your duty to amuse us. A story of
+some kind we must have, mustn’t we, Lina dearest?’
+
+‘It would be very pleasant in this half-light,’ answered Lina softly,
+quite happy, sitting silently between those two whom she loved so
+dearly, pleased especially at Daphne’s brightness and good-humour, and
+apparently friendly feeling for Gerald.
+
+‘You hear,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘Your liege lady commands you.’
+
+‘A story,’ mused Gerald in his laziest tone, with his head lying back
+on the cushions, and his eyes looking dreamily up at the ceiling,
+where the lights and shadows came and went so fantastically. ‘A story,
+ghostly or murderous, tragical, comical, amorous, sentimental—well,
+suppose now I were to tell you a classical story, as old as the hills,
+or as the laurel-bushes in your garden, the story of your namesake
+Daphne.’
+
+‘Namesake!’ echoed the girl, with her golden head resting against the
+arm of her sister’s chair, her eyes gravely contemplative of the fire.
+‘Had I ever a namesake? Could there be another set of godfathers and
+godmothers in the world stupid enough, or hard-hearted enough, to give
+an unconscious innocent such a name as mine?’
+
+‘The namesake I am thinking of lived before the days of godfathers and
+godmothers,’ answered Gerald, still looking up at the ceiling, with a
+dreamy smile on his face; ‘she was the daughter of a river-god and a
+naiad, a wild, free-born, untamable creature, beautiful as a dream,
+variable as the winds that rippled the stream from which her father
+took his name. Wooers had sought her, but in vain. She loved the wood
+and the chase, all free and sylvan delights—the unfettered life of a
+virgin. She emulated the fame of Diana. She desired to live and die
+apart from the rude race of men—a woodland goddess among her maidens.
+Often her father said: “Daughter, thou owest me a son.” Often her
+father said: “Child, thou owest me grandchildren.” She, with blushing
+cheeks, hung on her father’s neck, and repulsed the torch of Hymen, as
+if it were a crime to love. “Let me, like Diana, live unwedded,” she
+pleaded. “Grant me the same boon Jove gave his daughter.” “Sweet one,”
+said the father, “thy duty forbids the destiny thy soul desires. Love
+will find thee out.” The river-god spoke words of fatal truth. Love
+sought Daphne, and he came in a godlike form. Phœbus Apollo was the
+lover. Phœbus, the spirit of light, and music, and beauty. He saw her,
+and all his soul was on fire with love. The dupe of his own oracles,
+he hoped for victory. He saw Daphne’s hair floating carelessly upon
+the wind; the eyes, like shining stars; the sweet lips, which it was
+pain to see and not to kiss. But lighter than the wind the cruel nymph
+fled from him. In vain he called her, in vain he tried to stop her.
+“Stay, sweet one,” he cried, “it is no enemy who pursues thee. So
+flies the lamb the wolf, the hind the lion, the trembling dove from
+the strong-winged eagle. But ’tis love bids me follow. Stay thy steps,
+suspend thy flight, and I will slacken my pursuit. Foolish one, thou
+knowest not whom thou fliest. No rude mountaineer, or ungainly shepherd
+pursues thee, but a god before whose law Delphos, Claros, and Tenedos
+obey; the son of high Jove himself; the deity who reveals the past, the
+present, and the future; who first wedded song to the stringed lyre. My
+arrows are deadly, but a deadlier shaft has pierced my heart.” Thus and
+much more he pleaded, yet Daphne still fled from him, heedless of the
+briers that wounded her naked feet, the winds that lifted her flowing
+hair. The breathless god could no longer find words of entreaty.
+Maddened by love he followed in feverish haste; he gained on her; his
+breath touched her floating tresses. The inexorable nymph felt her
+strength failing; with outstretched arms, with beseeching eyes, she
+appealed to the river: “Oh, father, if thy waves have power to save me,
+come to my aid! Oh, mother earth, open and fold me in thine arms, or
+by some sudden change destroy the beauty that subjects me to outrage.”
+Scarcely was the prayer spoken when a heavy torpor crept over her
+limbs; the nymph’s lovely shoulders covered themselves with a smooth
+bark; her hair changed to leaves; her arms to branches; her feet, a
+moment before so agile, became rooted to the ground. Yet Phœbus still
+loved. He felt beneath the bark of the tree the heart beat of the nymph
+he adored; he covered the senseless tree with his despairing kisses;
+and then, when he knew that the nymph was lost to him for ever, he
+cried: “If thou canst not be my wife, thou shalt be at least Apollo’s
+sacred tree. Laurel, thou shalt for ever wreathe my hair, my lyre,
+my quiver. Thou shalt crown Rome’s heroes; thy sacred branches shall
+shelter and guard the palace of her Cæsars; and as the god, thy lover,
+shines with the lustre of eternal youth, so, too, shalt thou preserve
+thy beauty and freshness to the end of time.”’
+
+‘Poor Daphne,’ sighed Lina.
+
+‘Poor Apollo, I think,’ said Gerald; ‘he was the loser. What do you
+think of my story, Mistress Daphne?’
+
+‘I rather like my namesake,’ answered Daphne deliberately. ‘She was
+thorough. When she pretended to mean a thing she really did mean it.
+There is a virtue in sincerity.’
+
+‘And obstinacy is a vice,’ said Gerald. ‘I consider the river-god’s
+daughter a pig-headed young person, whose natural coldness of heart
+predisposed her to transformation into a vegetable. Apollo made too
+much of her.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+‘I DEME THAT HIRE HERTE WAS FUL OF WO.’
+
+
+All the servants at South Hill were old servants. Sir Vernon was a
+stern and an exacting master, but he only asked fair change for his
+shilling. He did not expect to reap where he had not sown, nor to
+gather where he had not strewed. His household was carried on upon a
+large and liberal scale, and the servants had privileges which they
+would hardly have enjoyed elsewhere. Therefore, with the disinterested
+fidelity of their profession, and of the human race generally, they
+stayed with him, growing old and gray in his service.
+
+Among these faithful followers was one who made a stronger point of her
+fidelity than any of the others, and affected a certain superiority to
+all the rest. This was Mowser, Madoline’s own maid, who had been maid
+to Lady Lawford until her death, and who, on that melancholy event, had
+taken upon herself the office of nurse to the orphan girl. That she was
+faithful to Madoline, and strongly attached to Madoline, there could
+be no doubt; but it was rather hard upon the outstanding balance of
+humanity that she could consider herself privileged by reason of this
+attachment to be as disagreeable as she pleased to everyone else.
+
+In those early days of Madoline’s infancy Mowser had taken possession
+of the nurseries as her own domain—belonging to her by some sovereign
+right of custodianship, as entirely hers as if they had been her
+freehold. Strong in her convictions on this point, she had resented
+all intrusion from the outer world; she had looked daggers at innocent
+visitors who were brought to see the baby; she had carried on war to
+the knife—a war of impertinences and uncivil looks—with Aunt Rhoda,
+firmly possessed by the idea that an aunt was an outsider as compared
+with a nurse.
+
+‘Didn’t I sit up night after night with her when she had the
+scarlet-fever, and go without my sleep and rest for a fortnight?’ said
+the faithful one, expatiating vindictively upon her wrongs, in the
+conversational freedom of the servants’-hall. ‘Will any of your fine
+ladies of fashion do that?’
+
+Mrs. Spicer was of opinion that some might, but not Miss Rhoda Lawford.
+She was a great deal too fond of her own comfort.
+
+Mowser was not a woman of high culture. She had begun the battle of
+life early, and was too old to have been subject to the exactions
+of the School Board. She had been born and bred in a Warwickshire
+village, and educated five-and-thirty years ago at a Warwickshire dame
+school. Gerald told Daphne that he had no doubt Mowser had every whit
+as much book-learning as Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden. She was
+not averse from the use of fine words, but pronounced them after her
+own fancy. All unauthorised visitors to the nursery she denounced as
+antelopes, meaning, it was supposed, not the graceful animal of the
+stag species usually known by that name, but the more obnoxious human
+individual commonly called an interloper. Even Daphne, when she took
+the liberty to be born, and was brought by her own particular nurse
+to Mowser’s nursery, was looked upon as belonging in some wise to the
+antelope family; while the strange nurse was, of course, a thoroughbred
+specimen of that race. While Daphne was an infant, and the second nurse
+remained, there were fearful wars and rumours of wars in Mowser’s
+apartments, and exultantly did that injured female lift up her voice
+when Daphne went to her first school—at an age when few children of the
+landed gentry are sent to school—and the unsanctified nurse departed.
+She came a Pariah, and she went a Pariah—a creature under a ban.
+
+‘Now I can breathe free,’ exclaimed Mowser, after she had
+ostentatiously opened the windows and aired the nurseries, as in a
+Jewish household windows and doors are flung wide when the spirit has
+departed. ‘I felt almost stuffocated while she was here.’
+
+Sir Vernon, seeing very little of Mowser, and knowing that she was a
+devoted nurse to his beloved elder daughter, had troubled himself very
+little about such complaints of her ‘tempers’ as from time to time
+reached his ears. He discouraged all fault-finding in his sister upon
+principle. So long as everything in the house, which concerned himself
+and his own comfort, went on velvet, he was unaffected by the fact that
+the servants made themselves disagreeable to other people. It was no
+matter to him that Spicer had been abominably impertinent to Aunt Rhoda
+in the morning, provided his dinner were well cooked in the evening.
+Nor did Rhoda’s raven croakings about the profligate wastefulness of
+his household distress him. He knew what he was spending, and that
+his expenses were so nearly on a level with his income that he always
+seemed poor: but though he liked to growl and grumble after every
+inspection of his banker’s book, he hated to be worried about pounds of
+butter, and quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, by his sister.
+
+‘If you pretend to keep my house, Rhoda, you must keep it quietly,
+and not plague me about these disgusting details,’ he said savagely;
+whereat Rhoda shrugged her elegant shoulders, and protested that if
+her brother liked to be cheated it was of course no business of hers to
+step in between him and the depredators.
+
+‘I don’t like to be cheated, but I like still less to be worried,’
+said Sir Vernon decisively; and Rhoda was wise enough to carry on the
+struggle no longer.
+
+She had her own comfort and her own advantage to consider, and she
+troubled her brother no further about domestic difficulties: but she
+carried on her war with the enemy vigorously notwithstanding—fiercest
+of all with Mowser, who looked upon Miss Lawford as the very head and
+front of the antelope tribe.
+
+Mowser was a servant of the old school. She prided herself upon the
+manners and habits of a past generation. She wore corkscrew ringlets,
+and a cap trimmed with real Buckinghamshire lace—none of your
+Nottingham machine-made stuff for Mowser. Her petticoats were short and
+scanty, and her side-laced cashmere boots were a relic of the past. She
+wore an ostentatious gold chain round her neck, and a portly silver
+watch at her side. She was rarely seen without a black-silk apron,
+which rustled exceedingly. She was of a bony figure, her face sharp and
+angular, her eyes a cold hard-looking gray.
+
+When Madoline left the nursery Mowser resumed her original function
+of lady’s-maid. She had no particular gifts for the office. She had
+no taste for millinery; she had no skill in hair-dressing. She had
+been chosen by Madoline’s mother—a young lady of very simple habits—on
+account of her respectability and local status. She was the daughter
+of Old Mrs. Somebody, who had been thirty years a servant in the first
+Lady Lawford’s family. The houses of the menial and the mistress had
+been allied for a century or so; and for this reason, rather than for
+any other, Jane Mowser had been considered eligible for the office of
+maid.
+
+She was active and industrious, kept her mistress’s wardrobe and
+her mistress’s dressing-room in exquisite order. She could wash and
+mend laces to perfection. She could pack, and unpack, and was a
+devoted attendant in illness. But here her powers found their limit.
+The milliner and the dressmaker had to do all the rest. Mowser had
+no more taste than any villager in her native hamlet; no capacity
+for advising or assisting her mistress in any of the details of the
+toilet. She looked upon all modern fashions as iniquities which were
+perpetually inviting from heaven a re-issue of that fiery rain which
+buried Sodom and Gomorrah. To Mowser’s mind, jersey jackets and
+eel-skin dresses, idiot fringes and Toby frills, were the fulfilment
+of the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy. These were the ‘changeable suits
+of apparel, the mantles, and the tires, and the crisping pins, the
+mufflers, and round-tires like the moon;’ and all these things were
+the forecast of some awful doom. It might be earthquakes, or floods,
+or a hideous concatenation of railway accidents, or the exhaustion of
+our coal mines, or the total failure of butcher’s meat by reason of the
+foot-and-mouth disease. Mowser did not know what form the scourge would
+take; but she felt that retribution, prompt and dire, must follow the
+reign of painted faces, jersey bodies, and tight-fitting skirts. Young
+women could not be allowed so to display their figures with impunity.
+Providence had an eye on their sham complexions and borrowed locks.
+
+All picturesqueness of attire Mowser resented as a play-actress style
+of dress, altogether degrading to a respectable mind. She objected to
+Daphne’s neatly-fitting, tailor-made gowns, her soft creamy muslins,
+relieved by dashes of vivid colour, and thought they would end badly.
+Not so did young ladies dress in Mowser’s youth. Small-patterned
+striped or checked silks, with neat laced berthas fitting close to
+modestly-covered shoulders, were then the mode. There was none of that
+artistic coquetry which gives to every woman’s dress a distinctive
+character, marking her out from the throng.
+
+Vainly did Mowser sigh for those vanished days, the simplicity, the
+high thinking and plain living, of her girlhood. Here was Mrs. Ferrers
+wasting the Rector’s substance upon gowns which five-and-twenty years
+ago would have been considered extravagant for a duchess; here was
+Daphne dressing herself up—with Madoline’s approval—to look as much as
+possible like a play-actress or an old picture.
+
+Mowser was no fonder of Daphne now than she had been in the days when
+the unwelcome addition to the nursery was stigmatised as an ‘antelope.’
+There was still a good deal of the antelope about Daphne, in Mowser’s
+opinion. ‘It would have been better for all parties if Miss Daphne had
+stayed a year or two longer at her finishing school,’ Mowser remarked
+sententiously in the housekeeper’s room, where she was regarded, or
+at any rate was known to regard herself, as an oracle. ‘First and
+foremost, she hasn’t half finished her education.’
+
+‘Haven’t she, Mowser?’ asked Jinman, Sir Vernon’s own man, with a
+malicious twinkle in his eye. ‘How did you find out that? Have you been
+putting her through her paces?’
+
+‘No, Mr. Jinman; but I hope I know whether a young lady’s education is
+finished, without the help of book-learning. My mother was left a lone
+widow before I was three years old, and I hadn’t the opportunities some
+people have had, and might have made better use of. But I know what a
+young lady ought to be, and what she oughtn’t to be; and I say Miss
+Daphne leans most to the last. Why, her manners are not half formed.
+She goes rushing about the house like a whirlwind; always in high
+spirits, or in the dumps—no mejum.’
+
+‘She’s dev’lish pretty,’ said Jinman, who, on the strength of having
+spent a good deal of time with his master at Limmer’s Hotel, put on a
+metropolitan and somewhat rakish air.
+
+‘She’s not fit to hold a candle to my mistress,’ retorted Mowser.
+
+‘Not such a reg’lar style of beauty, perhaps, but more taking, more
+“chick,”’ said the valet.
+
+‘I don’t know what you mean by “chick.” She’s a born flirt. Perhaps
+that’s what you mean. She’s her mother all over, worse luck for her!
+the same ways, the same looks, the same tones of voice. I wish she was
+out of the house. I never feel safe or comfortable about her. She’s
+like a dagger hanging over my head; and I don’t know when she may drop.’
+
+‘It’s a pity she refused young Turchill,’ said Jinman. ‘He’s the right
+sort. But as he still hangs on, I suppose she means to have him sooner
+or later.’
+
+‘No, she don’t. _That’s_ not her meaning,’ answered Mowser with
+significance.
+
+‘What does she mean, then?’
+
+‘I know what she means. I know her; much better than her poor innocent
+sister does. Masks and artifexes ain’t no use with me. I can read her.
+Mr. Turchill ain’t good enough for her. She wants someone better than
+him. But she won’t succeed in her mackinventions, while Mowser is by to
+file her—double-faced as she is.’
+
+There was a subtlety about Mowser this evening which her
+fellow-servants were hardly able to follow. They all liked Daphne,
+for her pretty looks and bright girlish ways, yet, with that love of
+slander and mystery which is common to humanity in all circles, they
+rather inclined to hear Mowser hint darkly at the girl’s unworthiness.
+They all preferred the slandered to the slanderer; but they listened
+all the same.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And now Christmas was over, and the night of the Hunt Ball at Stratford
+was approaching. It was to be Daphne’s first public appearance; first
+dance; first grown-up party of any kind. She was to see the county
+people assembled in a multitude for the first time in her life. A few
+of them she had seen by instalments at South Hill—callers and diners.
+She had been invited by these to various lawn parties: but her sister
+had refused all invitations of this kind, wishing that the occasion of
+Daphne’s _début_ should be something more brilliant than a mere garden
+party, a fool’s paradise of curates and young ladies.
+
+Daphne looked forward to the night with excitement, but excitement
+of that fitful kind which was common to her—now on the tiptoe of
+expectation, anon not caring a straw for the entertainment. There had
+been the usual talk about gowns; and Aunt Rhoda had insisted upon
+coming over to South Hill to give her opinion.
+
+‘White, of course, for the _débutante_,’ said Madoline. ‘There can be
+no question about that.’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers screwed up her lips in a severe manner, and looked at
+Daphne with a coldly critical stare.
+
+‘White is so very trying,’ she said, as if Daphne’s were not a beauty
+that could afford to be tried; ‘and then it has such a bridal air.
+I daresay there will be half-a-dozen brides at the ball. I know of
+two—Mrs. Toddlington, and Mrs. Frank Lothrop.’
+
+‘I don’t think Daphne need fear comparison with either of those,’
+answered Madoline, looking fondly at her sister, who was sitting on
+a cushion at her feet, turning over a book of fashion plates. ‘Well,
+darling, do you see anything there you would like?’
+
+‘Nothing. Every one of the dresses is utterly hideous; stiff,
+elaborate; fantastical, without being artistic; gaged and puffed and
+pleated, and festooned and fringed and gimped. Please dress me for the
+ball as you have always dressed me, out of your own head, Lina, without
+any help from Miss Piper’s fashion plates.’
+
+‘Shall I, dear? Would you really prefer that to choosing something in
+the very last fashion?’
+
+‘Infinitely.’
+
+‘Then I’ll tell you what it shall be. I will dress you like a portrait
+by Sir Joshua. The richest white satin that money can buy, made as
+simply as Miss Piper can possibly be persuaded to make it. A little
+thin lace, cloudlike, about your neck and arms, and my small pearl
+necklace for your only ornament.’
+
+‘Madoline, do you think it is wise of you to let Daphne appear in
+borrowed plumes?’ asked Mrs. Ferrers severely. ‘It may be giving her
+wrong ideas.’
+
+‘They shall not be borrowed plumes. The necklace shall be my New Year’s
+gift to you, Daphne, darling.’
+
+‘No, no, Lina. I am not going to despoil you of your jewels. I have
+always thought it was dreadfully bad of the Jewesses to swindle the
+Egyptians before they crossed the Red Sea, even though they were told
+to do it.’
+
+‘Daphne!’ screamed Aunt Rhoda; ‘your profanity is something too
+shocking.’
+
+‘My pet, I am not going to be contradicted,’ said Lina, not remarking
+upon this reproof. ‘The little necklace is yours henceforward. I have
+more jewellery than I can ever wear.’
+
+‘It was your mother’s, Madoline, and you ought to respect it.’
+
+‘It was my mother’s nature to give, and not to hoard, Aunt Rhoda. She
+would have been ashamed of a selfish daughter. Will that do, Daphne?
+The white satin and old Mechlin lace, and just one spray of stephanotis
+in your hair?’
+
+‘Nothing could be prettier, Lina.’
+
+‘What are you going to wear yourself, Madoline?’ asked Mrs. Ferrers
+with a dissatisfied air. ‘I suppose you are going to indulge in a new
+gown.’
+
+‘I have hardly made up my mind to be so extravagant. There is the
+gold-coloured satin I had for the dinner at Warwick Castle.’
+
+‘Much too heavy for a ball. No, you must have something new, Lina, if
+it be only to keep me in countenance. I had quite made up my mind to
+wear that pearl-gray sicilienne which you all so much admired; but the
+Rector insisted upon my getting a new gown from Paris.’
+
+‘From Worth?’
+
+‘Can you suppose I could be so extravagant? No, Lina; when I venture
+upon a French gown I get it from a little woman on a third floor in the
+Rue Vivienne. She was Worth’s right hand some years ago, and she has
+quite his style. I tell her what colours I should like, and how much
+money I am prepared to spend, and she does all the rest without giving
+me any trouble.’
+
+It was decided that Madoline should have a new gown of the palest
+salmon, or blush-rose colour; something which would look well with
+a profusion of those exquisite tea-roses which MacCloskie produced
+grudgingly in the winter-tide, burning as much coal in the process
+as if he were steaming home from China with the first of the
+tea-gatherings, and wanted to be beforehand with the rest of the
+trade. Mrs. Ferrers made a good many objections to Daphne’s white
+satin, and was convinced it would be unbecoming to her; also that
+it would be wanting in style; yet it would be conspicuous, if not
+positively _outré_. But Lina had made up her mind, and was a person of
+considerable decision on occasions. Whatever the colour or material
+chosen, Aunt Rhoda would have objected to it, as she had not been
+called upon to advise in the matter.
+
+‘Well, Lina, my dear, I must go home and give the Rector his afternoon
+tea,’ she said, rising and putting on her fur-lined mantle. ‘I might
+have spared myself the trouble of walking over to discuss the ball
+dresses. You haven’t wanted my advice.’
+
+‘It was very sweet of you to come all the same, auntie,’ said Lina,
+kissing her, ‘and we might have wanted you badly. Besides, your advice
+is going to be taken. It is to please you that I am going to have a new
+gown—which I really don’t want.’
+
+‘Be sure Miss Piper makes your waist longer. The last was too short.
+She is not a patch upon my little Frenchwoman. But you are so bent upon
+employing the people about you.’
+
+‘I like to spend my money near home, auntie.’
+
+‘Even if you are rewarded by being made a guy. Well, at your age, and
+with your advantages, you can afford to be careless. I can’t.’
+
+New Year’s Day passed very quietly. There was much less fuss about
+the new year at South Hill than there had been at Madame Tolmache’s
+twelve months ago; where the young ladies had prepared a stupendous
+surprise—of which she was perfectly aware a month beforehand—for that
+lady, in the shape of an embroidered sofa-cushion; and where the pupils
+presented each other with boxes of sweetmeats, and gushed exceedingly,
+in sentiments appropriate to the occasion.
+
+Except that Daphne found the pearl necklace in a little old-fashioned
+red morocco case under her pillow when she awoke on that first dawn of
+the year, the day might have been the same as other days. She sat up
+in her little curtainless bed, with the necklace in her hand, looking
+straight before her, into the wintry landscape, into the new year.
+
+‘What is it going to be like for me? What is it going to bring me?’
+she asked herself, her eyes slowly filling with tears, her face and
+attitude, even to the listless hand which loosely held the string of
+pearls, expressive of a dejection that was akin to despair. ‘What will
+this new-born year bring me? Not happiness. No, that could not be—that
+can never be. I lost the hope of that a year and a half ago—on one
+foolish, never-to-be-forgotten summer day. If I had died before that
+day—if I had taken the fever like those other girls, and had it badly,
+and died of it, would it not have been a better fate than to be always
+fluttering on the edge of happiness; wickedly, wildly happy sometimes
+when I am with him—wretched when he is away; guilty always—guilty
+to her, my best and my dearest; shameful to myself; lost to honour;
+conscience-stricken, miserable?’
+
+Her tears fell thick and fast now, and for some moments she wept
+passionately, greeting the new year with tears. Then, growing calmer,
+she lifted the pearls to her lips, and kissed them tenderly.
+
+‘It shall be a talisman,’ she said to herself. ‘White gift from a white
+soul, pure and perfect as the giver. Yes, it shall be a charm. I will
+sin no more. I will think of him no more of whom to think is sin. I
+will shut him out of my heart. My love, I will forget you! My love, who
+held my hand that summer day, and read my fate there—an evil fate—yes,
+for is it not evil to love you? my love, who stole my heart with sweet
+low words and magical looks—looks and words that meant nothing to you,
+but all the world—more than the world—to me. Oh, I must find some way
+of forgetting you. I must teach myself to be proud. It is so mean, so
+degrading, to go on loving where I have never been loved. If he knew
+it, how he would despise me! I would die rather than he should know!’
+
+Hard to face a new-born year in such a temper as this, with a heart
+heavily burdened by a fatal secret; all the world, to outward seeming,
+smiles and sunshine. For what care could such a girl as Daphne have, a
+girl who had no more need for the serious consideration of life than
+the lilies have? All without sunshine and turtle-doves; all within,
+darkness and scorpions.
+
+When she was dressed, save for the putting on of her warm winter gown,
+Daphne clasped the necklace round her throat. The pearls were not
+whiter or more perfectly shaped than the neck they clasped.
+
+‘I must wear my talisman always,’ she thought, as she fastened the
+snap. ‘Let me be like the prince in the fairy tale, whose ring used to
+remind him by a sharp little stab when he was drifting into sin.’
+
+She went downstairs in a somewhat more cheerful mood than that of her
+first awaking. There was comfort in the pearls. She kissed her sister
+lovingly, kneeling by her side as she thanked her for the New Year’s
+gift. There was an open jewel-case on the breakfast-table, and beside
+it a basket of summer flowers—a basket that had come straight from the
+sunny south, from the winterless flower-gardens on the shores of the
+Mediterranean.
+
+Daphne looked at the jewels first—a low thing in human nature, but
+inevitable. The case contained a sapphire cross, the stones large and
+lustrous, perfect in their deep azure, and set in the lightest, most
+delicate mounting—a cross which a princess might hold choicest amongst
+all her jewels. The flowers were roses, camellias, violets, and a
+curious thorny-stemmed orange-blossom.
+
+‘Oh, Lina,’ cried Daphne; ‘orange-blossom with thorns! Isn’t that an
+evil omen?’
+
+‘I hope not, dear, but I like the other kind best. This is almost too
+spiky to put in a flower-glass. But wasn’t it good of Gerald to get
+these flowers sent over from Nice for a New Year’s greeting?’
+
+‘Oh, it was he who sent them?’
+
+‘Who else? There was a little note at the bottom of the basket; and
+see, this lovely camellia bud is labelled “For Daphne.”’
+
+‘“There’s rue for you,”’ quoted Daphne, with her half bitter smile.
+‘Yes, it was very polite of him to remember my existence.’
+
+‘There is something else for you, darling—a locket, which Gerald asks
+me to give you from him. He hopes you will wear it at your first ball.’
+
+She opened a small blue velvet case, and Daphne beheld an oval locket
+of dead dull gold with a diagonal band of sapphires. It had a kind of
+moonlight effect which was very fascinating.
+
+‘No,’ said Daphne gently, but with unmistakable resolve; ‘I will accept
+jewels from no one but you. You can afford to give me all I shall ever
+want, and it is a pleasure to you to give—I know that, dearest—and to
+me to receive. I cannot accept Mr. Goring’s gift, although I appreciate
+his kindness in offering it.’
+
+‘Daphne! He will be dreadfully wounded.’
+
+‘No, he won’t. He will understand that I have a touch of pride. From my
+sister all the benefits in the world; but from him nothing—except this
+cold white bud!’
+
+She put it to her lips involuntarily, unconsciously; but the contact of
+the flower he had touched thrilled her with mysterious passion—as if it
+were his very soul that touched her soul. She shivered and turned pale.
+
+‘My pet, you are looking so ill this morning, so cold and wretched,’
+said Madoline, looking up from fond contemplation of her lover’s gifts
+just in time to see that white wan look of Daphne’s.
+
+‘I am well enough, but it is a cold wretched morning,’ answered
+Daphne, as she bent over the fire, spreading out her dimpled
+hands before the blaze. ‘Don’t you think New Year’s Day is a
+horrid anniversary?—beginning everything over again from a fresh
+starting-point; tempting one to think about the future; obliging one
+to look back at the past and be sorry for having wasted another year.
+You will go to church, I suppose, and take your dose of remorse in an
+orthodox form!’
+
+‘Won’t you come with me, Daphne? Everyone ought to go to church on New
+Year’s Day, even if it were not a sacred anniversary.’
+
+‘Yes, I’ll come, if you like. I may as well be there as anywhere else.’
+
+‘My darling, is that the way to speak or to think about it?’
+
+‘I don’t know. I’m afraid I am desperately irreligious. If I had
+ever found religion do me any good I might be more seriously-minded,
+perhaps. But when I pray, my prayers seem to come back to me unheard. I
+am always asking for bread, and getting a stone.’
+
+‘Dearest, there can be but one reason for that. You do not pray
+rightly. Constant, fervent prayer never failed yet to bring a blessing:
+perhaps not the very blessing we have asked for, but something purer,
+higher—the peace of God which passeth all understanding. That for the
+most part is God’s answer to faithful prayer.’
+
+‘Perhaps that is it. I pray in a half-hearted way. “My words fly up,
+my thoughts remain below.” I am anchored too heavily to this wicked
+world. I stretch out my hands to heaven, but not my heart: that is of
+the earth earthy.’
+
+‘Come to church, dear, and this solemn day will bring serious thoughts.’
+
+‘I would go if it were only for the sake of going a little way towards
+heaven with you. Yes, Lina dearest, I will go and kneel by your side,
+and pray to become more like you.’
+
+‘A poor example,’ answered Madoline, smiling.
+
+And now Sir Vernon entered, pale and drawn after his late illness, but
+erect and dignified. There were no family prayers at South Hill, and
+there never had been since the first Lady Lawford’s death. Sir Vernon
+went to church on Sunday morning, when he considered himself well
+enough, but all other religious offices he performed in the seclusion
+of his own rooms. There was therefore no morning muster for prayers,
+and the servants at South Hill were free to choose their own road to
+heaven.
+
+Madoline rose to greet her father with loving New Year wishes. Daphne
+kept her kneeling attitude by the fire, with her face turned towards
+the blaze, feeling that good wishes from her would be a superfluity.
+
+‘My years must always be happy while I have you, dearest,’ said Sir
+Vernon, kissing his elder daughter; and then, with some touch of
+gentlemanly feeling, bethinking himself of the child he did not love,
+he laid his hand lightly on Daphne’s golden head.
+
+‘Good morning, Daphne. A happy New Year to you!’ he said gently.
+
+She silently turned from the fire, took her father’s hand, and raised
+it to her lips. It was the first time she had ever done such a thing:
+a little gush of spontaneous feeling, and the father’s heart was
+touched—touched, albeit, like all Daphne’s graces, this little bit of
+girlish graciousness recalled her mother’s fatal charms.
+
+‘“Bless me, even me also, O my father!”’ she exclaimed, recalling one
+of the most pathetic passages of Holy Writ.
+
+‘God bless and prosper you, my dear.’
+
+‘Thank you, papa. That is a good beginning for the year,’ said Daphne,
+stifling a sob. ‘I don’t think I shall feel like Esau any more.’
+
+‘My dearest, what comparisons you make,’ cried Madoline. ‘In what have
+you ever been like Esau? Have I ever cheated you?’
+
+‘Not willingly, darling,’ answered Daphne, nestling close beside
+Madoline as she began to pour out Sir Vernon’s tea. ‘You are my
+benefactress, my guardian angel. Is it your fault if I belong by nature
+and pedigree to the tribe of Ishmael?’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+‘AL SODENLY SHE SWAPT ADOWN TO GROUND.’
+
+
+The second week of January was half over, and it was the night of the
+Hunt Ball. What girl of eighteen, were her breast ever so gnawed by
+secret cark and care, could refrain from giving way to some excitement
+upon the occasion of her first dance, and that a dance which was
+to be danced by all Warwickshire’s beauty and chivalry—a dance as
+distinguished, from a local standpoint, as that famous assembly in
+Belgium’s capital, which was scared by the thunder of distant guns, the
+prelude of instant war?
+
+Daphne gave herself up wholly to the delight of the hour. She had been
+unusually cheerful and equable in her temper since New Year’s Day.
+That parental blessing, freely and ungrudgingly given, seemed to have
+sweetened her whole nature. She went to church with Madoline, and
+prayed with all her heart and soul, and listened without impatience to
+a string of seasonable platitudes, culled from the elder divines, and
+pronounced in a humdrum style of elocution by the Reverend Marmaduke
+Ferrers. She had been altogether blameless in her bearing and her
+conduct in this new-fledged year: so much so that Mrs. Ferrers had
+deigned to concede, with chilly patronage, that Daphne was beginning to
+become a reasonable being.
+
+She had been fighting her inward battle honestly and bravely. She had
+avoided as much as possible that society which was so poisonously sweet
+to her. She had been less exacting to her devoted slave, Edgar. She had
+given more time to improving studies. She had taken up Mendelssohn’s
+Lieder, and practised them industriously, breathing, ah! too much
+soul into the pathetic passages, dwelling too fondly on the deep
+ground-swell of melody, which carries a passionate heart along on its
+fierce tide, and, in its fervid feeling and exaltation of spirit, is
+akin to the actual triumph of a happy love.
+
+Unconscious of the danger, and resolutely bent on curing herself of a
+futile foolish attachment, she yet fed her passion with the fatal food
+of poetry and music, finding in every heroine she most admired, from
+Juliet to Enid, a love as inevitably doomed to misery as her own. But
+all the while she was earnest in her desire to forget.
+
+‘If my namesake, in the pride of her purity, could fly from a god who
+adored her, surely it cannot be hard for me to harden my heart against
+a man who does not care a straw for me,’ she told herself scornfully.
+
+The day of the Hunt Ball brought pleasure enough to thrust aside every
+other thought. Miss Piper had done as well as if she had been born and
+bred in Paris. Daphne’s white satin gown fitted the slim and supple
+figure to perfection. It was not the ivory tint of late years, but that
+exquisite pearly white, with a blackish tint in the shadows, which one
+sees in old pictures. Daphne, with her wavy hair coiled at the back of
+her beautifully-shaped head, and with just one spray of stephanotis
+nestling in the coils, looked like a Juliet painted by Sir Joshua. It
+was Juliet’s dress, as Juliet used to be dressed by actresses of an age
+less given to the research of correctness and elaboration in costume.
+The single string of pearls on the pearly neck, the bodice modestly
+draping the lovely shoulders, the round white arms peeping from
+elbow-sleeves of satin and lace, the long loose gloves, the slender
+feet in white satin sandalled shoes, meant for dancing—not in those
+impossible high-heeled instruments of torture which Parisian bootmakers
+have inflicted on weak woman—all had something of an old-fashioned air;
+but it was a very lovely old fashion, and Madoline was delighted with
+the result.
+
+‘Rather _outré_, don’t you think?’ said Mrs. Ferrers, sourly
+contemplative of Daphne’s fresh young beauty, which made her own
+complexion look so much yellower than usual, when she happened to
+glance across the girl’s shoulder at her own face in the big cheval
+glass. ‘A little too suggestive of Kate Greenaway’s Baby Books.’
+
+She was trying to settle herself in her panoply of state, a gorgeous
+arrangement in ruby velvet and cream-coloured satin, which the little
+Frenchwoman in the Rue Vivienne had only sent off in time to reach Mrs.
+Ferrers two hours ago, after keeping her in an agony of mind for the
+last three days. It was a very splendid gown, so slashed, and draped,
+and festooned, that it was a mystery how it could ever be put together.
+The velvet cuirass was laced up the back with thick gold cord, and
+fitted like a strait-waistcoat; and the ruby scarf was fringed with
+heavy bullion, which drooped above a stormy sea of cream-coloured
+satin, that went billowing and surging round the lady’s legs till
+it met a long narrow streak of ruby velvet lined with satin, which
+meandered for about twelve feet along the floor. That Mrs. Ferrers must
+be a nuisance to herself and everybody else in such a dress no one
+in their senses could doubt; but then on the other hand the gown was
+undoubtedly in the latest fashion, and was one which must evoke a pang
+of envy in every female breast.
+
+‘I don’t wonder you look disdainfully at my short petticoats, Aunt
+Rhoda,’ said Daphne, smiling at the effect of her sandalled ankles as
+she pirouetted before the looking-glass; ‘but I think, when it comes to
+dancing, I shall be better off than you with your velvet train.’
+
+‘I am not likely to dance much,’ answered Mrs. Ferrers, with dignity.
+‘Indeed, as a clergyman’s wife, I don’t know that I shall dance at
+all.’
+
+‘Then you will have to sit with your train coiled round your feet to
+prevent people walking on it, and that will be worse,’ retorted Daphne.
+
+It was a clear cold night, with a brilliant moon—a glorious night for a
+country drive—frosty, but not severe enough to make the roads slippery;
+besides, Boiler and Crock were the kind of horses that nobody hesitates
+to have roughed on occasion.
+
+Sir Vernon had decided on escorting his daughters to the ball. It was
+a sacrifice of his own ease and comfort, but he felt that the occasion
+required it.
+
+‘I shall stay an hour,’ he said, ‘and then Rodgers can drive me home,
+and go back to fetch you later. It won’t hurt the horses going over the
+ground a second time.’
+
+‘Dear father,’ said Madoline, ‘it is so good of you to go with us.’
+
+And now, after a reviving cup of tea, and careful wrapping in fur-lined
+cloaks and Shetland shawls, the three ladies and Sir Vernon conveyed
+themselves into the roomy landau, and were soon bowling along the
+smooth high-road towards Stratford. What a transformed and glorified
+place the little town seemed to-night—all lights, and people, and loud
+and authoritative constabulary! such an array of fiery-eyed carriages,
+three abreast in the wide street in front of The Red Horse! such a
+block in the narrower regions about the Town Hall! so much confusion,
+despite of such loud endeavours to maintain order!
+
+It seemed to Daphne as if they were going to sit in the carriage all
+night, with the humbler townsfolk peering in at them from the pavement,
+and making critical remarks to each other in painfully distinct voices.
+
+‘Ain’t the fair one pretty?’ ‘The dark one’s the handsomest.’ ‘My eye!
+look at the old lady’s diamonds.’ ‘That’s Lord Willerby.’ ‘No, it
+ain’t, stoopid.’ ‘I see the coronet on the kerridge.’ ‘My, what lovely
+hair she’s got!’ ‘White satin, ain’t it?’ and so on, while cornets and
+violins sounded in the distance with distracting melody.
+
+‘It’ll be dreadful if we have to sit in the street quite all the
+evening,’ said Daphne, listening hopelessly to the voice of authority,
+with its perpetual ‘Move on, coachman.’
+
+They waited about twenty minutes, and then slowly drove up to the
+doorway, where the eager faces of the crowd made a hedge on each
+side. Difficult to believe that this entrance hall, luminous with
+lamps and bright flowers, was the same which gave admittance to such
+prosaic beings as town-clerks and vestrymen, justices of the peace
+and policemen. Edgar and Gerald were both hovering near the doorway,
+waiting for the South Hill party: Edgar, at the risk of being accused
+of deserting his mother, whom he had established in a comfortable
+corner of the ball-room, and then incontinently left to her own
+reflections, or to such conversation as she might be able to find
+among sundry other dowagers arrived at the same wall-flower stage of
+existence.
+
+‘I thought you were never coming,’ said Edgar, offering Daphne his arm,
+and in a manner appropriating her.
+
+‘I thought we were going to spend the evening in the street,’ answered
+Daphne.
+
+Gerald gave his arm to Madoline; Sir Vernon followed with his sister,
+whose high-heeled Louis Quinze shoes matched her gown to perfection,
+but were not adapted for locomotion. Happily she was a light and
+active figure, and managed to trip up the broad oak stairs somehow;
+though she felt as if her feet had been replaced by the primitive
+style of wooden leg, the mere dot-and-go-one drumstick, with which the
+Chelsea pensioner used to be accommodated before the days of elaborate
+mechanical arrangements in cork and metal.
+
+The ball-room was already crowded, the South Hill party having arrived
+late, by special desire of Aunt Rhoda, who strongly objected to be
+among those early comers who roam about empty halls dejectedly, taking
+the chill off the atmosphere for the late arrivals. Dancing was in full
+swing, and the assembly in the big ball-room made a blaze of colour
+against the delicate French-gray walls; the pink of the fox-hunters,
+and the uniforms of the officers from Warwick and Coventry, showing
+vividly amongst the pale and airy drapery of their partners. There were
+more than two hundred in the room already, Edgar told Daphne, as he
+pointed out the more striking features of the scene.
+
+‘I daresay there’ll be nearer three hundred before midnight,’ he said.
+‘It’s going to be a grand affair. Only once in two years, you see:
+people save themselves up for it. A lot of fellows in pink, aren’t
+they?’
+
+‘Yes. Why didn’t you wear a scarlet coat? It’s much prettier than
+black.’
+
+‘Do you really think so? If I’d known—’ faltered Edgar. ‘But I felt
+sure you would have laughed at me if I’d sported the swallow-tail I
+wear at hunt dinners sometimes.’
+
+‘I daresay I should,’ Daphne answered coolly; ‘but you’d have looked
+ever so much nicer all the same.’
+
+Edgar felt regretful. He had debated with himself that question of pink
+or no pink; and the thought of Daphne’s possible ridicule had turned
+the scale in favour of sober black; and now she told him he would have
+looked better in the more distinctive garb. And there were fellows who
+could hardly jump a drain-pipe showing off in their Poole or Smallpage
+coats, and giving themselves Nimrod airs which imposed upon the sweet
+simplicity of their partners.
+
+The room was a noble room, long and lofty, divided from a spacious
+antechamber by a wide square doorway, supported by classic pillars.
+Over this doorway was the open gallery for the band. The ball-room
+was lighted by a large central chandelier, and two sun-burners in the
+ceiling; while from lyre-shaped medallions on the walls projected
+modern gas brackets in imitation of old-fashioned girandoles of the
+wax-candle period.
+
+There were four full length portraits on the walls: the Duke of Dorset,
+by Romney; a portrait of Queen Anne, as uninteresting as that harmless
+lady was in the flesh. The remaining two pictures had to do with the
+local divinity. One was Gainsborough’s portrait of Garrick, leaning
+against the bust of Shakespeare; the other was the poet seated, in his
+habit as he lived, by Wilson.
+
+‘You see,’ said Gerald, close behind Daphne, ‘there is the Warwickshire
+idol. One can’t get away from him. Why can these bucolics worship
+nothing but the intellectual emanation of their soil? Why not a little
+homage to muscular Christianity, in the person of Guy, Earl of Warwick,
+a paladin of the first water, a man who rescued damsels, and fought
+with giants and dun cows, and was strong and brave, and faithful,
+pious, self-sacrificing, devoted in every act of his life? There is a
+hero worthy of worship. Yet you all ignore him, and bow down before
+this golden calf of a dramatist, who sued his friend for a twopenny
+loan, and left the wife of his bosom a second-best bedstead—a paltry
+fellow beside Guy, the hero-hermit, living on bread and water, and only
+revealing himself at his death to the wife he adored.’
+
+‘Guy was a very nice person, if one could quite believe in the giant
+and the dun cow,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘I believe implicitly in Colbrand the giant,’ answered Gerald, ‘but I
+own I have never been able to swallow the monster cow; and I am all
+the more inclined to repudiate her because her bones were on view at
+Warwick in Shakespeare’s time.’
+
+‘And it was very sweet of him to end his days so quietly in the
+hermit’s cave at Guy’s Cliff,’ pursued Daphne, who was well versed in
+all Warwickshire lore, chiefly by oral instruction from Edgar, ‘and
+to take alms from his own wife every morning, as one of the thirteen
+beggars she was in the habit of relieving; though I have never quite
+understood why he did it. But in spite of all these grand acts of Guy’s
+we know nothing of the man himself, while Shakespeare is like one’s
+brother. He has sounded the deep of every mind, and has given us the
+treasures of his own.’
+
+‘I suspect he would rather have given anything than his money,’
+retorted Gerald.
+
+They had penetrated to Mrs. Turchill’s corner by this time. That matron
+was looking the picture of disconsolate solitude—the dowager with whom
+she had been talking about her servants and her tradespeople having
+left her to look after a brace of somewhat go-ahead daughters, who
+in pale blue silk jerseys, and tight cream-coloured cashmere skirts,
+looked very much as if they were attired for some acrobatic performance.
+
+‘I am so glad you have come,’ exclaimed poor Mrs. Turchill, brightening
+at the sight of Madoline. ‘The room is dreadfully crowded, and there
+are so many strangers.’ This was said resentfully, no stranger having
+any more right to be present, from Mrs. Turchill’s point of view, than
+Pentheus at his mother’s party. ‘I feel as if I hardly knew a creature
+here.’
+
+‘Oh, mother, when there are the Hilldrops, and the Westerns, and the
+Hilliers, and the Perkinses,’ remonstrated Edgar, running over a string
+of names.
+
+‘All I can say is that if there are any of my friends in the room no
+one has taken the trouble to bring them to me,’ retorted Mrs. Turchill.
+‘And for any enjoyment I have had from the society of my friends I
+might as well be at that horrid Academy conversazione for which you
+took so much trouble to get tickets the year before last, and where I
+was jammed into a corner of the sculpture room half the evening, with
+rude young women sitting upon me.’
+
+Here Sir Vernon and Mrs. Ferrers approached, and Mrs. Turchill resumed
+her company smile in honour of people of such importance. Aunt Rhoda
+had been exchanging greetings with the cream of the county people
+during her leisurely progress through the rooms, and felt that her gown
+was a success, and that the little woman in the Rue Vivienne was worthy
+of her hire. Everybody was looking at Daphne. Her youth and freshness,
+her vivid smiles and natural girlish animation, as she conversed
+now with Edgar, and anon with Gerald, fascinated everyone; it was a
+manner entirely without reserve, yet with no taint of forwardness or
+coquetry—the manner of a happy child, whose sum of life was bounded
+by the delight of the moment, rather than of a woman conscious of her
+loveliness, and knowing herself admired.
+
+‘Who is that pretty girl in the white satin frock—the girl like an
+old picture?’ people were asking, somewhat to the annoyance of older
+stagers in the beauty-trade, who felt that here was a new business
+opened, which threatened competition, stock-in-trade of the best
+quality, and perfectly fresh.
+
+One young lady, whose charms had suffered the wear and tear of seven
+seasons, contemplated Daphne languidly through her eye-glass, and
+summed her up with scornful brevity as ‘the little Gainsborough girl!’
+
+‘Quite too lovely, for the next six months,’ said another, ‘but her
+beauty depends entirely on her complexion. A year hence she will have
+lost all that brightness, and will be a very wishy-washy little person.’
+
+‘And then I suppose she’ll paint, as the others do, don’t you know,’
+drawled her partner; ‘carmine her lips, and all that sort of thing.’
+
+The lady looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of a carefully
+darkened eyelid.
+
+‘Let us hope she won’t sink quite so low as that,’ she said with
+dignity.
+
+There was no doubt as to Daphne’s triumph. Before she had been an hour
+in the room, she was the acknowledged belle of the ball. People went
+out of their way to look at her. She walked once round the rooms on
+her father’s arm, and in that slow and languid progress held, as it
+were, her first court. It was her first public appearance; her father’s
+friends clustered round him, eager to be presented to the _débutante_.
+Stately dowagers begged that she might be made known to them. All the
+best people in the room knew Sir Vernon, and all professed a friendly
+desire to know his younger daughter. Her card was full before she knew
+what she was doing.
+
+‘Our little Daphne is a success!’ said Gerald to his betrothed, as they
+glided round the room in a languorous troistemps. ‘All the Apollos are
+running after her.’
+
+‘I am so glad. Dear child! It is such a pleasure to see her happy,’
+answered Madoline softly.
+
+‘I hope her head won’t be turned by all this adulation. It is such a
+poor little puff-ball of a head. I sometimes fancy she has thistledown
+inside it instead of brains.’
+
+‘Indeed, dear, she has plenty of sense and serious feeling,’
+remonstrated Madoline, wounded by this allegation. ‘But she is
+painfully sensitive. She needs very tender treatment.’
+
+‘Poor butterfly!’
+
+‘Do you like her dress?’
+
+‘It is simply perfect. Your taste, of course.’
+
+‘Yes; she let me have my own way in the matter.’
+
+‘And as a reward she is looking her loveliest. It is not the calm
+beauty of a princess, like my Lina’s; but for a spoiled-child kind of
+prettiness, capricious, mutinous, variable, there could be nothing
+better.’
+
+Later he was at Daphne’s side, as she sat in a corner by her aunt, with
+half-a-dozen young men hovering near, Edgar nearest of all, holding her
+fan.
+
+‘I suppose you have saved at least one dance for me, Empress,’ he said,
+taking her programme from her hand.
+
+‘I don’t know. All sorts of people have been writing down their names.’
+
+‘All sorts of people,’ echoed Gerald, examining the card. ‘You will be
+a little more respectful about your partners in your seventh or eighth
+season. Why, here, under various hieroglyphics, are the very topmost
+strawberries in the social basket—masters of fox-hounds, eldest sons of
+every degree, majors and colonels—and not one little waltz left for
+me! I claim you for the first extra.’
+
+‘I—I’m rather afraid I’m engaged for the extras.’
+
+‘No matter. You were solemnly engaged to me for one particular waltz
+when first this ball was spoken of at South Hill. You don’t remember,
+perhaps; but I do. I claim my bond. I will be a very Shylock in the
+exaction of my due.’
+
+‘If you were a better Shakespearian it would occur to you that Shylock
+got nothing,’ retorted Daphne, smiling up at him.
+
+‘He was an old idiot. Remember, the first extra valse. We shall meet at
+Philippi.’
+
+He was off to claim Lina for the Lancers. It was the last dance before
+supper. Sir Vernon had disappeared ever so long ago. Mrs. Ferrers was
+standing up with a major of dragoons, in all the splendour of his
+uniform, and felt that she and her partner made an imposing picture.
+Edgar and Daphne were sitting out this square dance on the stairs,
+the girl somewhat exhausted by much waltzing, the man exalted to the
+seventh heaven of bliss at being permitted to bear her company.
+
+‘May I take you down to supper?’ he asked.
+
+‘Thanks; no. My last partner—the man in the red coat——’
+
+‘Clinton Chetwynd, master of the Harrowby Harriers?’ interjected Edgar.
+
+‘Told me that the best dancing will be when two-thirds of the people
+are gormandising downstairs. You can get me an ice, if you like.’
+
+Edgar obeyed; but when he came back with the ice Daphne had vanished
+from the landing, and he got himself entangled in a block of people
+struggling down to supper.
+
+The rooms below—those solemn halls in which on ordinary occasions
+the local offender stood at the bar of justice to answer for his
+misdeeds—were now a scene of glitter and gaiety; flower-wreathed
+épergnes, barley-sugar pagodas, and all the tinselly splendour of a
+ball-supper. Bar, and bench, and magisterial chairs had vanished as
+if by magic. The magistrate’s private apartment and the justice hall
+had been thrown into one spacious banqueting-chamber, where even the
+proverbial greediness of the best society—the people who tread upon
+each other’s toes and rush for the grapes and peaches at Buckingham
+Palace—might be satisfied without undue scrambling. But though there
+would have been room for him at the banquet, and although there were
+any number of eligible young ladies waiting to be taken down, Edgar
+scorned the idea of a supper which Daphne did not care for. To have
+sat by her, squeezed into some impossible corner of a rout-seat, to
+have fought for lobster-salad for her, and guarded her frock from the
+ravages of awkward people, and pulled cracker bon-bons with her, would
+have been bliss; but the festal board without her would be every whit
+as funereal a banquet as the famous sable feast at which that cheerful
+practical joker Domitian entertained his courtiers.
+
+Mr. Turchill found a good-natured fox-hunter to take his mother down,
+and having seen that lady’s silver-gray satin—newly done up with violet
+velvet by Miss Piper for the occasion—making its deliberate way down
+the broad staircase, on the sportsman’s sturdy scarlet arm, Edgar went
+back to the almost empty ball-room, where about fifteen or twenty
+couples were revolving to the last sugary-sweet German waltz, ‘_Glaubst
+du nicht_?’
+
+Daphne and Gerald were amongst these; Madoline was sitting with some
+girl-friends in the entrance of one of the windows, and to this point
+Edgar made his way.
+
+‘You’ve not been down to supper,’ he remarked, by way of saying
+something original.
+
+‘Do you know, I don’t much care about going down. If Gerald
+particularly wishes it I shall go after this dance; but I think I
+should enjoy a sandwich and a cup of tea when I get home better than
+the scramble downstairs.’
+
+The waltzers were dropping off by degrees; but Gerald and Daphne still
+went on revolving with gliding languid steps to the dreamy melody. They
+moved in exquisite harmony, although this was the first time they had
+ever waltzed together. Never in the twilight dances at South Hill had
+Mr. Goring asked Daphne to be his partner. He had been content to stand
+outside in the porch, smoking his cigarette, and looking on, while she
+and Edgar waltzed, or to take a few lazy turns afterwards with Madoline
+to Daphne’s music. To-night for the first time his arm encircled her;
+her sunlit head rested against his shoulder. It seemed to him that his
+hand had never clasped hers since that summer day at Fontainebleau,
+just a year and a half ago; when they had stood by the golden water,
+with the hungry-eyed carp watching them, and a sky of molten gold above
+their heads. They had been far apart since that day; dissevered by
+an impalpable abyss; and now for the moment they were one, united by
+that love-sick melody, their pulses stirred by the same current. Was
+it strange that in such a moment Gerald Goring forgot all the world
+except this perfect flower of youth and girlhood which he held in his
+arms—forgot his betrothed wife, and all her grace and beauty; lived
+for the moment, and in the moment only, as butterflies live—with a
+past not worth remembering, and annihilation for their only future? As
+the dancers dropped off the band played slower and slower, meaning to
+expire in a _rallentando_, and those two waltzers gliding round drifted
+unawares into the outer and smaller room, where there was no one.
+
+‘_Glaubst du nicht_?’ sighed the band, ‘_Glaubst du nicht_? _Ach
+Liebchen, glaubst du nicht_?’ and with the last sigh of the melody,
+Gerald bent his lips over Daphne’s golden hair and breathed a word into
+her ear—only one word, wrung from him in despite of himself. But that
+one word so breathed from such lips was all the history of a passionate
+love which had been fought against in vain. The last sigh of the music
+faded as the word was spoken, and Daphne was standing by her partner’s
+side white as ashes.
+
+‘Take me back to my sister, please.’
+
+He gave her his arm without a word, and they walked slowly across to
+the group by the window; but before Madoline could make room for Daphne
+to sit by her side the girl tottered, and would have fallen, if Edgar
+had not caught her in his arms.
+
+‘She is fainting!’ he cried, alarmed. ‘Some water—brandy—something!’
+He wrenched open the window, still holding Daphne on his left arm.
+The frosty night-air blew in upon them, keen and cold. Daphne’s white
+lips trembled, and the dark gray eyes opened and looked round with
+a bewildered expression, as she sank slowly into the seat beside
+Madoline, whose arms were supporting and embracing her.
+
+‘My darling, you have danced too much. You have overexcited yourself,’
+said Lina tenderly; while three or four smelling-bottles came to the
+rescue.
+
+‘Yes; that last dance was too much,’ faltered Daphne, cold and
+trembling in her sister’s arms. ‘But I’m quite well now, Lina. It was
+nothing. The heat of the room.’
+
+‘And you are tired. We’ll go home directly we can find Aunt Rhoda.’
+
+‘I’ll go and hunt for her,’ said Gerald, who had been standing vacantly
+looking on, his brain on fire, his heart beating tumultuously, the
+vulture conscience gnawing his vitals already.
+
+He had been thinking of Rousseau’s Julie, and that first kiss given in
+the bosquet—the fatal first kiss—the beginning of all evil.
+
+‘My sweeter Julie—so much more lovely—so much more innocent,’ he
+thought, as he went slowly downstairs in quest of the ruby velvet
+arrangement which contained Mrs. Ferrers. ‘God give me grace to respect
+your purity!’
+
+The winter wind rushed into the heated ball-room with a sharp chill
+breath that was suggestive of another and a colder world, like the
+deadly air from a vault, and soon steadied Daphne’s reeling brain.
+
+‘You see I am not such a good waltzer as I thought I was,’ she said,
+looking up at Edgar with a sickly smile. ‘I did not think anything
+could make me giddy.’
+
+‘You would rather go home now, would you not, dear?’ asked Madoline.
+‘You have had enough of the ball.’
+
+‘More than enough.’
+
+‘Let me fetch your wraps from the cloak-room,’ said Edgar. ‘It will
+save you a good deal of trouble.’
+
+‘If you would be so very kind.’
+
+‘Delighted. Give me your ticket. Seventy-nine. All under one number, I
+suppose.’
+
+He ran off, and this time had to stem the tide setting in towards the
+ball-room; the young men and maidens who had eaten their supper and
+were eager for more dancing. Coming back with a pile of cloaks and
+shawls on his arm, he joined Gerald and Mrs. Ferrers, her red-coated
+major still in attendance.
+
+‘What can Daphne mean by making a spectacle of herself at her first
+ball?’ asked Aunt Rhoda, not a little aggrieved at being ruthlessly
+dragged away from a knot of the very best people, a little group of
+privileged ones, which included a countess and two baronets’ wives.
+‘But it is just like her.’
+
+‘There was no affectation in the matter, I can assure you,’ said Edgar
+indignantly; ‘she looked as white as death.’
+
+‘Then she should have danced less. I detest any exhibition of that
+kind. I am very glad my brother was not here to see it.’
+
+‘I think Sir Vernon has had so much reason to be proud of his daughter
+this evening that he would readily have forgiven her iniquity in
+fainting,’ retorted Edgar, his blood at boiling-point from honest
+indignation.
+
+Daphne, wrapped in a long white cashmere cloak lined with white fur,
+looked very pale and ghostlike as she went slowly through the rooms on
+Edgar’s arm, attacked on her way by the reproaches of the partners with
+whom she was breaking faith by this untimely departure.
+
+‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said, with a faint touch of her natural
+gaiety, ‘but I’ll pay my debts this time two years. The engagements can
+stand over.’
+
+When the bi-annual Hunt Ball comes round at Stratford-on-Avon there are
+some, perhaps, who will remember her promise, and the pale, pathetic
+face, and white-robed figure.
+
+Five minutes later the three ladies were seated in their carriage, Mrs.
+Ferrers still grumbling, while Edgar lingered at the door adjusting
+Daphne’s wraps.
+
+Just as he was going to shut the door, having no excuse for further
+delay, Daphne took his hand and clasped it with friendly warmth.
+
+‘How good you are!’ she said softly, looking up at him with eyes that
+to his mind seemed lovelier than all the lights of the firmament,
+infinitely glorious on this frosty night in the steel-blue sky. ‘How
+good you are! how staunch and true!’
+
+It was only well-merited praise, but it moved him so deeply that
+he had no power to answer, even by the smallest word. He could only
+grasp the slender little hand fervently in his own, and then shut the
+carriage-door with a bang, as if to drown the tumult of his own heart.
+
+‘Home, coachman,’ he called, in a choking voice; an entirely
+superfluous mandate, neither coachman, nor footman, nor horses, having
+the least idea of going anywhere else.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+‘FOR WELE OR WO, FOR CAROLE, OR FOR DAUNCE.’
+
+
+Edgar went back to the ball-room with his heart so penetrated with
+bliss, that the whole scene had an unreal look to him in its brightness
+and gaiety, as if in the next instant dancers, and lights, and music,
+and familiar faces might vanish altogether, and leave him suspended in
+empty space, alone with his own deep delight. He was as near Berkeley’s
+idea of the universe as a man so solid and substantial in his habits
+could be. Thought and feeling to-night made up his world; all the
+rest might be nothing but a spectral emanation from his own brain. He
+lived, he thought, he felt; and his heart and brain were filled with
+one idea, and that was Daphne. The ball-room without Daphne, albeit
+the Caledonians were just being danced with considerable spirit, was
+all falsehood and hollowness. He saw the spurious complexions, the
+scanty draperies, all the artificial graces and meretricious charms,
+as he had not seen them while she was there. That little leaven had
+leavened the whole lump. His eye, gladdened by her presence, had seen
+all things fair. But although he was inclined to look contemptuously
+upon the crowd in which she was not, the gladness of his heart made him
+good-naturedly disposed to all creation. He would have liked to leave
+that gay and festive scene immediately; but finding his mother enjoying
+herself very much in a snug corner with three other matrons, all in
+after-supper spirits, he consented to wait till Mrs. Turchill had seen
+one or two more dances.
+
+‘I like to watch them, Edgar,’ she said, ‘though I feel very thankful
+to Providence that we didn’t dance in the same style, or wear such
+tight dresses, in my time. I remember reading that they wore scanty
+skirts and hardly any bodices in the period of the French Revolution,
+and that some of their fashionable women even went so far as to appear
+with bare feet, which is almost too revolting to mention. All I can
+say is, that I hope the dresses I see to-night are not the signs of an
+approaching revolution in England; but I should hardly be surprised
+if they were. Do go and get a nice partner and let me see you waltz,
+Edgar. You’ve improved wonderfully since the Infirmary Ball last year.’
+
+‘I’m glad you think so, mother, but I shan’t dance any more to-night. I
+made no engagements for after supper, except with Daphne, and she has
+gone home.’
+
+‘Oh, the South Hill people have gone, have they? Well, if you’re not
+going to dance any more perhaps we may as well be going too,’ said
+Mrs. Turchill, perceiving that a good many of the county people were
+slipping quietly away, and not wishing to be left with the masses.
+
+So Edgar, very glad to escape, gave his mother his arm and assisted
+her to the cloak-room, where she completely extinguished herself in a
+valuable though somewhat old-fashioned set of sables, which covered her
+from head to foot, and made her look like a walking haystack.
+
+How full of happy fancies the young man’s mind was as they drove
+through the lanes and cross-country roads to Hawksyard under that
+brilliant sky, so peopled with worlds of light—‘gods, or the abodes of
+gods;’ he cared to-night no more than Sardanapalus what those stars
+might be—with now a view of distant hills, far away towards the famous
+Wrekin, a cloudlike spot in the extreme distance, and now vivid gleams
+of the nearer river, glittering under those glittering stars.
+
+‘Isn’t it a delicious night, mother?’ he cried, and only a gentle
+snore—a snore expressive of the blissfulness of repose after
+exertion—breathed from the matronly mass of furred cloak and hood.
+
+He was quite alone—glad to be alone—alone with his new sense of
+happiness, and the starry night, and the image of his dear love.
+
+She had spoken him fair; she meant to make him happier than man ever
+was upon earth, since the earth could have produced but one Daphne.
+She must have meant something by those delicious words, that sweet
+spontaneous praise. Unsolicited she had taken his hand and pressed
+it with affectionate warmth—she who had been so cold to him—she who
+had never evinced one touch of tender feeling before; only a frank,
+sisterly kindness, which was more galling than cruelty. And to-night
+she had lifted up her eyes and looked at him—eyes so mournfully sweet,
+so exquisitely beautiful.
+
+‘My angel, that marble heart is melted at last,’ he said to himself.
+‘Who would not be constant, for such a reward?’
+
+He had only been in love with Daphne a little over six months, yet it
+seemed to him now that in that half year lay the drama of his life.
+All that went before had been only prologue. True that he had fancied
+himself in love with Madoline—the lovely and gracious lady of his
+youthful dreams—but this was but the false light that comes before
+the dawn. He felt some touch of shame at having been so deceived
+as to his own feelings. He remembered that afternoon in the meadows
+between South Hill and Arden Rectory, when he had poured his woes
+into Daphne’s sympathising ears; when she, his idol of to-night, his
+idol for evermore, had seemed to him only a pretty school-girl in a
+muslin frock. Was she the same Daphne? Was he the same Edgar? She who
+now was a goddess in his sight. He who wondered that he could ever
+have cared for any other woman. The disciple of Condillac, when he
+sits himself down seriously to think out the question whether the
+rose which he touches and smells is really an independent existence,
+or only exists in relation to his own senses, was never in a more
+bewildered condition than honest Edgar Turchill when he remembered how
+devotedly, despairingly, undyingly, he had once loved—or fancied that
+he loved—Madoline.
+
+‘Romeo was the same,’ he told himself sheepishly, having taken to
+reading Shakespeare of late, to curry favour with that fervid little
+Shakespearian, Daphne; ‘madly in love with Rosaline at noon—over head
+and ears in love with Juliet before midnight. And critics say that
+Shakespeare knew the human heart.’
+
+Sleep that night was impossible for the master of Hawksyard. Happily
+there was but a brief remnant of the night left in which he need lie
+tossing on his sleepless couch, staring at the brown oak panels, where
+the reflection of the night-lamp glimmered like a dim starbeam in a
+turbid pool. Cold wintry dawn came creeping over the hills, and at the
+first streak of daylight he was up and in his icy bath, and then on
+with his riding-clothes and away to the stable, where only one sleepy
+underling was moving slowly about with a lantern, calling drowsily to
+the horses to stand up and come out of a warm stable, in order to be
+tied to a wall and have pails of water thrown at them in a cold yard.
+
+To saddle Black Pearl with his own hands was but five minutes’ work,
+and in less than five more he was clattering under the archway and off
+to the nearest bit of open country, to take it out of the mare, who had
+not done any work for a week, and was in a humour to take a good deal
+out of her rider. Edgar this morning felt as if he could conquer the
+wildest horse that ever was foaled—nay, the Prince of Darkness himself,
+had he been called upon to wrestle with him under an equine guise.
+
+A hard gallop over a broad expanse of flat common, where the winter
+rime lay silver-white above the russet sward, quieted horse and rider;
+and, after a long round by lane and wood, Edgar rode quietly back to
+Hawksyard between ten and eleven, just in time to find his mother
+seated at breakfast, and wondering at her own dissipation.
+
+After this unusually late breakfast Mr. Turchill went to look at his
+horses—a regular thing on a non-hunting morning. ‘I took it out of the
+mare,’ he said, as Black Pearl stood reeking in her box, waiting to
+cool down before she was groomed.
+
+‘Indeed you have, sir,’ answered his head man—a faithful creature, but
+not ceremonious with a master he adored. ‘You don’t mean hunting her
+to-morrow, I suppose?’
+
+‘Well, yes, I did, if the weather allows. Don’t you think she’ll be
+fit?’
+
+‘I think you’ve pretty well whacked her out for the next week to come.
+She won’t touch her corn.’
+
+‘Poor old woman!’ said Edgar, going into the box and fondling the
+beautiful black head. ‘Did we go too fast, my girl? It was as much your
+fault as mine, my beauty. I think we were both bewitched; but I must
+take the nonsense out of you somehow, before you carry a lady.’
+
+‘You didn’t think of putting a lady on that mare, did you, sir?’ asked
+the groom.
+
+‘Yes, I do. I think she’d carry a lady beautifully.’
+
+‘So she would, sir; but she wouldn’t carry the same lady twice. There’d
+be very little left of the lady when she’d done.’
+
+‘Think so, Jarvey? Then we must find something better for the
+lady—something as safe as a house, and as handsome as—as paint,’
+concluded Edgar, whose mind was not richly stocked with poetical
+similes. ‘If you hear of anything very perfect in the market you can
+let me know.’
+
+‘Yes, sir.’
+
+It seemed early in the day to think of buying a horse for a wife who
+was yet to be won; but, encouraged by those few words of Daphne’s,
+Edgar saw all the future in so rosy a light that, this morning,
+freshened and exhilarated by his long ride, he felt as secure of
+happiness as if the wedding-bells were ringing their gay joy-peal over
+the flat green fields and winding waters. He was longing to see Daphne
+again, to win from her some confirmation of his hope; and now as he
+moved about the poultry-yard and gardens he was counting the minutes
+which must pass before he could with decency present himself at South
+Hill.
+
+It would not do for him to go there before luncheon. Everybody would
+be tired. Afternoon tea-time would perhaps be the more agreeable hour.
+It was a period of the day in which women always seemed to him more
+friendly and amiable than at any other time—content to lay aside the
+most enthralling book, or the newest passion in fancy-work, and to
+abandon themselves graciously to the milder pleasures of society.
+
+The afternoon was so fine that he went on foot to pay his visit, glad
+to get rid of the time between luncheon and five o’clock in a leisurely
+six-mile walk. It was a delicious walk by meadow, and copse, and
+river-side, and although Edgar knew every inch of the way, he loved
+nature in all her moods so well that the varying beauties of a frosty
+winter afternoon were as welcome to his eye and spirit as the lush
+loveliness of midsummer; and he was thinking of Daphne all the way,
+picturing her smile of greeting, feeling the thrilling touch of her
+hand, warm in his own.
+
+Madoline, or Sir Vernon, would ask him to dinner, no doubt; and then,
+some time during the evening, he would be able to get Daphne all to
+himself in the conservatory, on the stairs, in the corridor. His heart
+and mind were so full of purpose that he felt what he had to say could
+be said briefly. He would ask her if she had not repented her cruelty
+that night in the walnut walk; if she had not found out that true love,
+even from a somewhat inferior kind of person, was worth having—a jewel
+not to be flung under the feet of swine. And then, and then, she would
+lift up those sweet eyes to his face—as she had done last night—and
+he would clasp her unreproved in his arms, and know himself supremely
+blest. Life could hold no more delight. Death might come that moment
+and find him content to die.
+
+It was dusk when he came to South Hill, a frosty twilight, with a
+crimson glow of sunset low down in the gray sky, and happy robins
+chirruping in the plantations, where the purple rhododendrons flowered
+so luxuriantly in spring-time, and where scarlet berries of holly and
+mountain ash enlivened the dull dark greenery of winter. The house
+on the hill, with its many windows, some shining with firelight from
+within, others reflecting the ruddier light in the sky, made a pleasant
+picture after a six-mile tramp through a somewhat lonely landscape. It
+looked a hospitable house, a house full of happy people, a house where
+a man might find a temporary haven from the cares of life. To Edgar’s
+eyes the firelight shining from within was like a welcome.
+
+‘Miss Lawford at home?’ he inquired.
+
+‘Not at home,’ answered the footman with a decisive air.
+
+Now there is something much more crushing in the manner of a footman
+when he tells you that his people are out than in that of the
+homelier parlour-maid who gives the same information. The girl would
+fain reconcile you to the blow; she sympathises with you in your
+disappointment. Perhaps she offers you the somewhat futile consolation
+implied in the fact that her mistress has only just stepped out, or
+comforts you with the distant hope that your friend will be home to
+dinner. She would be glad if she could to lessen your regret. But the
+well-trained man-servant looks at you with the blank and stony gaze of
+a blind destiny. His voice is doom. ‘Not at home,’ he says curtly; and
+if, perchance, there be any expression in his face, it will be a veiled
+scorn, as who should say, ‘Not at home—to you.’
+
+But Edgar was in a mood not to be daunted by the most icy of menials—a
+Warwickshire bumpkin two years ago, but steeped to the lips in the
+languid insolence of May Fair to-day.
+
+‘Is Miss Daphne Lawford at home?’ he asked.
+
+The footman believed, with supreme indifference, as if the presence or
+absence of a younger daughter who was not an heiress were a question
+he could hardly stoop to contemplate, that Miss Daphne Lawford might
+possibly be found upon the premises; and he further condescended to
+impart the information that Miss Lawford had driven to the Abbey with
+Mrs. Ferrers and Mr. Goring to see the improvements.
+
+‘I’ll go and find her for myself,’ said Edgar, too eager to wait for
+forms and ceremonies; ‘I daresay she is in the morning-room.’
+
+He passed the servant, and went straight to the pretty room where he
+had been so much at home for the last ten years. There were no lamps or
+candles; Daphne was sitting alone in the firelight, in one of those low
+roomy chairs which modern upholsterers delight in—sitting alone, with
+neither book nor work, and Fluff, the Maltese terrier, curled up in her
+lap.
+
+Her eyelids were lowered, and Edgar approached her softly, thinking she
+was asleep; but at the sound of his footfall she looked up, gently,
+gravely, without any surprise at his coming.
+
+‘I hope that you are better—quite well, in fact; that you have entirely
+recovered from your fatigue last night,’ he began tenderly.
+
+‘I am quite well,’ she answered almost angrily, and blushing crimson
+with vexation. ‘Pray don’t make a fuss about it. Waltzing so long made
+me giddy. That was all.’
+
+Her snappish tone was a cruel change after her sweetness last night.
+Edgar’s heart sank very low at this unexpected rebuff.
+
+‘You are all alone,’ he said feebly.
+
+‘Unless you count Fluff and the squirrel, yes. But they are very good
+company,’ answered Daphne, brightening a little, and smiling at him
+with that provoking kindness, that easy friendliness, which always
+chilled his soul.
+
+It was so hopelessly unlike the feeling he wished to awaken.
+
+‘Madoline drove to the Abbey with Aunt Rhoda and Mr. Goring directly
+after luncheon. The new hot-houses are finished, I believe, at last. I
+have been horribly lazy. I only came down an hour ago.’
+
+‘I am glad you were able to sleep,’ said Edgar. ‘It was more than I
+could do.’
+
+‘I suppose nobody ever does sleep much after a ball,’ answered Daphne.
+‘The music goes on repeating itself over and over again in one’s brain,
+and one goes spinning round in a perpetual imaginary waltz. I was
+thinking all last night of Don Ramiro and Donna Clara.’
+
+‘Friends of yours?’ inquired Edgar.
+
+Daphne’s eyes sparkled at the question, but she did not laugh. She only
+looked at him with a compassionate smile.
+
+‘You have never read Heine?’
+
+‘Never. Is it interesting?’
+
+‘Heinrich Heine? He was a German poet, don’t you know. As great a poet,
+almost, as Byron.’
+
+‘Unhappily I don’t read German.’
+
+‘Oh, but some of his poetry has been translated. The translations are
+not much like the original, but still they are something.’
+
+‘And who is Don— Ra——what’s-his-name?’ inquired Edgar, still very much
+in the dark.
+
+‘The hero of a ballad—an awful, ghastly, ghostly ballad, ever so much
+ghastlier than Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene, and the worms
+they crept in, and the worms they crept out, don’t you know. He is
+dead, and she has jilted him, and married somebody else; and he has
+promised her on the eve of her wedding that he will come to the wedding
+feast: and he comes and waltzes with her, and she doesn’t know that
+he is dead, and she reproaches him for wearing a black cloak at her
+bridal, and she asks him why his cheeks are snow-white and his hands
+ice-cold, and they go on whirling round all the time, the trumpets
+blowing and the drums beating, and to all she says he gives the same
+answer:
+
+    “Said I not that I would come?”
+
+That awful ballad was in my mind all night, and when I did at last fall
+asleep, I dreamt I was at the ball again, and instead of Stratford Town
+Hall we were in an old Gothic palace at Toledo and—and—the person I was
+dancing with was Don Ramiro. His white dead face looked down at me, and
+all the people vanished, and we were dancing alone in the dark cold
+hall.’
+
+She shuddered at the recollection of her dream, clasping her hands
+before her face, as if to shut out some hideous sight.
+
+‘You ought not to read such poetry,’ said Edgar, deeply concerned. ‘How
+can people let you have such books?’
+
+‘Oh, there is no harm in the book. You know I adore poetry. Directly
+I was able to write a German exercise, I got hold of Heine, and began
+to spell out his verses. They are so sweet, so mournful, so full of a
+patient despair.’
+
+‘You have too much imagination,’ said Edgar. ‘You ought to read sober
+solid prose.’
+
+‘“Blair’s Lectures,” “Sturm’s Reflections,” “Locke on the
+Understanding,”’ retorted Daphne, laughing. ‘No; I like books that take
+me out of myself and into another world.’
+
+‘But if they only take you into charnel-houses, among ghosts and dead
+people, I don’t see the advantage of that.’
+
+‘Don’t you? There are times when anything is better than one’s own
+thoughts.’
+
+‘Why should you shrink from thought?’ asked Edgar tenderly. ‘You can
+have nothing painful to remember or think about; unless,’ he added,
+seeing an opening, ‘you feel remorseful for having been so cruel to me.’
+
+He had drawn his chair close to hers in the firelight—the ruddy,
+comfortable light which folded them round like a rosy cloud. She sat
+far back in her downy nest, almost buried in its soft depths, her eyes
+gazing dreamily at the fire, her sunny hair glittering in the fitful
+light. If she had been looking him full in the face, in broad day,
+Edgar Turchill could hardly have been so bold.
+
+‘I did feel very sorry, last night, when you were so good to me,’ she
+said slowly.
+
+‘Good to you! Why, I did nothing!’
+
+‘You are so loyal and good. I saw it all last night, as if your heart
+had suddenly been spread open before me like a book. I think I read you
+plainly last night for the first time. You are faithful and true; a
+gentleman to the core of your heart. All men ought to be like that: but
+they are not.’
+
+‘You can have had very little experience of their shortcomings,’ said
+Edgar, his heart glowing at her praise. And then, emboldened, and yet
+full of fear, he hastened to take advantage of her humour. ‘If you can
+trust me; if you think me in the slightest measure worthy of these
+sweet words, which might be a much better man’s crown of bliss, why
+will you not make me completely happy? I love you so truly, so dearly,
+that, if to have an honest man for your slave can help to make your
+life pleasant, you had better take me. I know that I am not worthy of
+you, that you are as high above me in intellect, and grace, and beauty,
+as the stars are in their mystery and splendour; but a more brilliant
+man might not be quite so ready to mould himself according to your
+will, to sink his own identity in yours, to be your very slave, in
+fact; to have no purpose except to obey you.’
+
+‘Don’t!’ cried Daphne. ‘If you were my husband, I should like you to
+make me obey. I am not such a fool as to want a slave.’
+
+‘Let me be your husband; we can settle afterwards who shall obey,’
+pleaded Edgar, leaning with folded arms upon the broad elbow of her
+chair, trying to get as near her as her entrenched position would allow.
+
+‘I like you very much. After Madoline there is no one I like better,’
+faltered Daphne; ‘but I am not the least little bit in love with you. I
+suppose it is wrong to be so candid; but I want you to know the truth.’
+
+‘If you like me well enough to marry me, I am content.’
+
+‘Really and truly? Content to accept liking instead of love; confidence
+and frank straightforward friendship instead of sentiment or romance?’
+
+‘I do not care a straw for romance. And to be liked and trusted——well,
+that is something. So long as there is no one else you have ever liked
+better——’
+
+The face turned towards the fire quivered with the passing of a strong
+emotion, but Edgar could only see the thick ripple a of golden hair
+making a wavy line above the delicate ear, and the perfect outline of
+the throat, rising out of its soft lace ruffle like the stem of a lily
+from among its leaves.
+
+‘Who else is there for me to like?’ she asked with a faint laugh.
+
+‘Then, dearest, I would rather have your liking than any other woman’s
+love: and it shall go hard with me if liking do not grow to love before
+our lives are ended,’ said Edgar, clasping the hand that lay inert upon
+Fluff’s silky back.
+
+The Maltese resented the liberty by an ineffectual snap.
+
+‘Please, don’t—don’t think it quite settled yet,’ cried Daphne, scared
+by this hand-clasp, which seemed like taking possession of her. ‘You
+must give me time to breathe—time to think. I want to be worthy of
+you, if I can—if—if—I am ever to be your wife. I want to be loyal—and
+honest—as you are.’
+
+‘Only say that you will be my wife. I can trust you with the rest of my
+fate.’
+
+‘Give me a few days—a few hours, at least—to consider.’
+
+‘But why not to-day? Let it be to-day,’ he pleaded passionately.
+
+‘You must give me a little while,’ answered Daphne, smiling faintly at
+his impatience, which seemed to her something childish, she not being
+touched by the same passion, or inspired by the same hope, being, as it
+were, outside the circle of his thoughts. ‘If—if—you are very anxious
+to be answered—let it be to-day.’
+
+‘Bless you, darling!’
+
+‘But don’t be grateful in advance. The answer may be No.’
+
+‘It must not. You would not break my heart a second time.’
+
+‘Ah, then you contrived to mend it after the first breakage,’ retorted
+Daphne, laughing with something of her old mirth. ‘Madoline broke it
+first, and you patched it together and made quite a good job of it, and
+then offered it to me. Well, if you really wish it, you shall have your
+answer to-night. I must speak to Lina first.’
+
+‘I know she will be on my side.’
+
+‘Tremendously. You will dine here, of course. And I suppose you will go
+away at about eleven o’clock. You know the window of my room?’
+
+‘Know it!’ cried Edgar, who had lingered to gaze at that particular
+casement under every condition of sky and temperature. ‘Know it? Did
+Romeo know Juliet’s balcony?’
+
+‘Well, then, at ten minutes past eleven look up at my window. If the
+answer be No, the shutters will be shut, and all dark; if the answer be
+Yes, the lamp shall be in the window.’
+
+‘Oh, blessed light. I know the lamp will be there.’
+
+‘And now no more of this nonsense,’ said Daphne imperatively. ‘I am
+going to give you some tea.’
+
+‘Put a dose of poison in it, and finish me off straight, if the lamp is
+not going to shine in your window.’
+
+‘Absurd man! Do you suppose I know any more than you what the answer is
+to be? We are the sport of Fate.’
+
+The door was opened gently, as if it had been the entrance to a sick
+man’s chamber, and the well-drilled footman brought in a little folding
+table, and then a tea-tray, an intensely new-fashioned old-fashioned
+oval oaken tray, with a silver railing, and oriental cups and saucers
+_à la Belinda_—everything strictly of the hoop-and-patch period. These
+frivolities of tray and tea-things were one of Mr. Goring’s latest
+gifts to his mistress.
+
+Not another tender word would Daphne allow from her lover. She talked
+of the people at the ball, asked for details about everybody—the girl
+in the pink frock; the matron with hardly any frock at all; the hunting
+men and squires of high degree. She kept Edgar so fully employed
+answering her questions that he had no time to edge in an amorous
+speech, though his whole being was breathing love.
+
+Madoline and Gerald Goring came in and found them _tête-à-tête_ by the
+fire. They had made a _détour_ on their way home, and had deposited
+Mrs. Ferrers at the Rectory. It was the first time Gerald had seen
+Daphne since the ball.
+
+‘Better?’ he inquired, with a friendly nod.
+
+‘Quite well, thanks. I have not been ill,’ she answered curtly.
+
+Mr. Goring seated himself in a shadowy corner, remote from the little
+group by the tea-table.
+
+‘Shall I ring for more tea, or have you had some at the Abbey?’ asked
+Daphne, with a businesslike air.
+
+‘We had tea in Lady Geraldine’s room,’ answered Madoline. ‘I wish you
+had been with us, Daphne. It is such a lovely room in the firelight.
+The houses are all finished, and Cormack has filled three of them
+already. Such lovely flowers! I can’t imagine where he has found them.’
+
+‘Easy to do that kind of thing when one has a floating balance of
+fifty thousand or so at one’s bankers,’ answered Edgar cheerily. ‘My
+wife will have to put up with a few old orange-trees that have been at
+Hawksyard for a century.’
+
+The tone in which he uttered those two words ‘my wife,’ startled
+Gerald out of his reverie. There was a world of suppressed delight and
+triumph in the utterance.
+
+‘He has been asking her to marry him, and she has relented, and
+accepted him,’ he thought, hardly knowing whether to be glad or angry.
+
+Was it not ever so much better that she should reward this faithful
+fellow’s devotion, and marry, and be happy in the beaten track of
+life? He had told himself once that she was a creature just a little
+too bright and lovely for treading beaten tracks, a girl who ought to
+be the heroine of some romantic history. Yet, are these heroines of
+romance the happiest among women? Was the young woman who was sewn up
+in a sack and drowned in the Bosphorus happy, though her fate inspired
+one of the finest poems that ever was written? Was Sappho particularly
+blest, or Hero, Heloise, or Juliet? Their fame was the fruit of
+exceptional disaster, and not of exceptional joy. The Greek was wise
+who said that the happiest she is the woman who has no history.
+
+Sir Vernon Lawford came in while they were all talking of hot-houses,
+and asked for a cup of tea, an unusual condescension on his part, and
+which fluttered Daphne a little as she rang the bell for a fresh teapot.
+
+‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. Give me anything you have there,’ he
+said, more kindly than he was wont to speak. ‘So you were too tired to
+show at luncheon. Your aunt says you danced too much.’
+
+‘It was her first ball,’ pleaded Madoline.
+
+‘Yes; the first, but not likely to be the last. She is launched now,
+and will have plenty of invitations. A foolish friend of mine told me
+that Daphne was the belle of the ball.’
+
+‘She was,’ said Edgar sturdily. ‘I saw two old women standing on a
+rout-seat to look at her.’
+
+‘Is that conclusive?’ asked Sir Vernon good-humouredly, and with a
+shrewd glance from Edgar to his fair-haired daughter.
+
+‘I think people must have been demented if they wasted a look upon me
+while Lina was in the room,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘Oh, but every one knows Lina,’ answered her father, pleased at this
+homage to his beloved elder daughter. ‘You are a novelty.’
+
+He was proud of her success, in spite of himself; proud that she should
+have burst upon his Warwickshire friends like a revelation of hitherto
+unknown beauty—unknown, at least, since his second wife, in all the
+witchery of her charms, had turned the heads of the county twenty years
+ago. That beauty had been a fatal dower—fatal to her, fatal to him—and
+he had often told himself that Daphne’s prettiness was a perilous
+thing; to be looked at with the eye of fear and suspicion rather than
+that of love. And yet he was pleased at her triumph, and inclined to be
+kinder to her on account thereof.
+
+They seemed a happy family-party at dinner that day. Madoline was full
+of delight in the improvement of her future home—full of gratitude
+to her betrothed for the largeness with which he had anticipated her
+wishes. Edgar was in high spirits; Daphne all gaiety; Sir Vernon
+unusually open in speech and manner. If Gerald was more silent than the
+others, nobody noticed his reserve. He had been quiet all day, and when
+Madoline had questioned him as to the cause, had owned to not being
+particularly well.
+
+Later in the evening they all adjourned to the billiard-room, with
+the exception of Daphne, who pleaded a headache, and bade every one
+good-night; but about an hour afterwards, upon the stroke of eleven,
+Madoline, who had just gone up to her room, was startled by a knock
+at her door, and then by the apparition of Daphne in her long white
+dressing-gown.
+
+‘My pet, I thought you went to bed an hour ago.’
+
+‘No, dear. I had a headache, but I was not sleepy.’
+
+‘My poor darling; you are so pale and heavy-eyed. Come to the fire.’
+
+Madoline wanted to instal her in one of the cosy armchairs by the
+hearth, but Daphne slipped to her favourite seat on the fleecy white
+rug at her sister’s feet.
+
+‘No, dear; like this,’ she said, looking up at Madoline with tearful
+eyes; ‘at your feet—always at your feet; so much lower than you in all
+things—so little worthy of your love.’
+
+‘Daphne, it offends me to hear you talk like that. You are all that is
+sweet and dear. You and I are equal in all things, except fortune: and
+it shall not be my fault if we are not made equal in that.’
+
+‘Fortune!’ echoed Daphne drearily. ‘Oh, if you but knew how little I
+value that. It is your goodness I revere—your purity, your—’
+
+She burst into tears, and sobbed passionately, with her face hidden on
+her sister’s knee.
+
+‘Daphne, what has happened—what has grieved you so? Tell me, darling;
+trust me.’
+
+‘It is nothing; mere foolishness of mine.’
+
+‘You have something to tell me, I know.’
+
+‘Yes,’ answered Daphne, drying her tears hastily and looking up with
+a grave set face. ‘I have come to ask your advice. I mean to abide by
+your decision, whichever way it may fall. Edgar wants me to marry him,
+and I have promised him an answer to-night. Shall it be “Yes” or “No?”’
+
+‘Yes, of course, my pet, if you love him.’
+
+‘But I don’t; not the least atom. I have told him so in the very
+plainest straightest words I could find. But he still wishes me to be
+Mrs. Turchill; and he seems to think that when I have been married to
+him twenty years or so I shall get really attached to him—as Mrs. John
+Anderson, my Jo, did, don’t you know? She may have cared very little
+for Mr. Anderson at the outset.’
+
+‘Oh, Daphne,’ sighed Madoline, with a distressed look, ‘this is very
+puzzling. I don’t know what to say. I like Edgar so much—I value him so
+highly—and I should dearly like you to marry him.’
+
+‘You would!’ cried Daphne decisively. ‘Then that settles it. I shall
+marry him.’
+
+‘But you don’t care for him.’
+
+‘I care for you. I would do anything in this world—yes,’ with sudden
+energy, ‘the most difficult thing, were it at the cost of my life—to
+make you happy. Would it make you happy for me to marry Edgar?’
+
+‘I believe it would.’
+
+‘Then I’ll do it. Hark! there’s the outer door shutting,’ cried Daphne,
+as the hall-door closed with a hollow reverberation. ‘Edgar will be
+under my window in a minute or two. I’ll run and give him my answer.’
+
+‘What do you mean?’
+
+‘A lamp in my window is to signify Yes.’
+
+‘Go and put the lamp there, darling. May it be a star for you both,
+shining upon the beginning of a bright happy life!’
+
+A few minutes later Edgar, standing in the shrubbery walk, with
+his eyes fixed on Daphne’s casement, the owner of them unconscious
+of winter’s cold, saw the bright spot of light stream out upon the
+darkness, and knew that he was to be blest. He went home like a man in
+a happy dream, scarce knowing by what paths he went; and it is a mercy
+he did not walk into the Avon and incontinently drown himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+‘FOR I WOL GLADLY YELDEN HIRE MY PLACE.’
+
+
+Edgar Turchill rode over to South Hill directly after breakfast next
+morning. It was a hunting-day, and the meet was at a favourite spot;
+but he had business to do which could brook no delay, and even the
+delight of skimming across the Vale of the Red Horse, on a hunter well
+able to carry him, must give way to the more vital matter which called
+him to the house on the hill. So soon as Sir Vernon Lawford might be
+fairly supposed to be accessible to a visitor, Mr. Turchill presented
+himself, and asked for an interview.
+
+He was ushered straight to Sir Vernon’s study, that sacred, and in a
+manner official chamber, which he had ever held in awe; a room in
+which the driest possible books, in the richest possible bindings,
+repelled the inquiring mind of an ordinary student, who, looking for
+Waverley, found himself confronted with Blackstone, or exploring for
+Byron, found himself face to face with Coke or Chitty.
+
+Here, Sir Vernon, seated reposefully in his great red morocco armchair,
+listened courteously to Edgar’s relation of his love, and his hope
+that, subject to parental approval, his constancy might speedily be
+rewarded. ‘I have heard something of this before,’ said Sir Vernon.
+‘My sister told me you had proposed to Daphne, and had been rejected.
+I was sorry the child had not better taste; for I like you very much,
+Turchill, as I believe you know.’
+
+‘You have been very good to me,’ answered Edgar, reddening with the
+honest warmth of his feelings. ‘South Hill has been my second home. The
+happiest hours of my life have been spent here. Yes, Sir Vernon, Daphne
+certainly did refuse me in the summer; but I felt that it was my own
+fault. I spoke too soon. I ought to have bided my time. And last night,
+after the ball, I spoke again, and—’
+
+‘With a happier result,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘But Daphne is little
+more than a child—no wiser than a child in her whims and fancies. I
+should not like a straightforward fellow like you to suffer from a
+school-girl’s frivolity. Do you think she knows her own mind now any
+better than she did in the summer, when she gave you quite a different
+answer? Are you sure that she is in earnest—that she is as fond of you
+as you are of her?’
+
+‘I have no hope of that,’ answered Edgar, a little despondently. ‘I
+have been loving her ever since she came home, and my love has grown
+stronger with every day of my life. If she likes me well enough to
+marry me, I am content.’
+
+Sir Vernon remained silent for some moments, gravely contemplating the
+fire, as if he were reading somebody’s history in it, and that a gloomy
+one.
+
+‘I am fond enough of you to be sorry you should marry on such
+conditions,’ he answered, after a longish pause. ‘My younger daughter
+is a very pretty girl—people persecuted me with compliments about her
+the other night—and, I suppose, a very fascinating girl; but if she
+does not honestly and sincerely return your love, I say, Do not marry
+her. Pluck her out of your heart, Edgar, as you would a poisonous weed.
+Be sure, if you don’t, the poison will rankle there by-and-by, and
+develop its venom at the time you are least prepared for it.’
+
+Edgar, secure in his assurance of future happiness—for what man, having
+won Daphne, could fail to be happy?—smiled at the unwonted energy of
+Sir Vernon’s address.
+
+‘My dear sir, you take this matter too seriously,’ he replied. ‘I have
+no fear of the issue. Daphne’s heart is free, and it will be very hard
+if I cannot make myself owner of it, loving her as I do, and having her
+promise to marry me. I only want to be assured of your approval.’
+
+‘That you have with all heartiness, my dear boy. But I should like to
+be sure that Daphne is worthy of you.’
+
+‘Worthy of me!’ echoed Edgar, with a tender smile; ‘I wish to Heaven I
+were worthy of her.’
+
+‘She is very young,’ said Sir Vernon thoughtfully.
+
+‘Nineteen on her next birthday.’
+
+‘But that birthday is nearly a year off. I hope you will not be in a
+hurry to be married.’
+
+‘I shall defer that to your judgment; though I think, as I can never
+feel warmly interested in Hawksyard till I have a wife there, the
+sooner we are married, so far as my happiness is concerned, the better.’
+
+‘Of course. You young men have always some all-sufficient reason for
+being over the border with the lady. How will your mother relish the
+change?’
+
+Poor Edgar winced at the question, feeling very sure that Mrs. Turchill
+would take the event as her death-blow.
+
+‘My mother is perfectly independent,’ he faltered. ‘She has her
+jointure.’
+
+‘Has she not Hawksyard for her life?’
+
+‘No; the estate was strictly entailed. I am sole master there.’
+
+‘I am glad of that,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘It is an interesting old place.’
+
+‘Daphne likes it,’ murmured Edgar fatuously.
+
+‘I suppose you know that I can give my younger daughter no fortune?’
+
+‘If you could give her a million, it would not make me one whit better
+pleased at winning her.’
+
+‘I believe you, Edgar,’ answered Sir Vernon. ‘When a man of your mould
+is in love, filthy lucre has very little weight with him. There will
+be a residue, I have no doubt, when I am gone—a few thousands; but the
+bulk of my property was settled when I married Lina’s mother. I suppose
+you know that Lina is very pleased at the idea of having you for a
+brother-in-law?’
+
+‘I know nothing, except that Daphne has consented to be my wife.’
+
+‘Lina announced the fact to me this morning at breakfast. Daphne was
+not down—a headache—a little natural shyness, I daresay. Lina is very
+glad—very much your friend.’
+
+‘She has always been that,’ faltered Edgar, looking back with
+half-incredulous wonder to the time when a word from Lina had been
+enough to stir the pulses of his heart, when the mention of her name
+was music.
+
+‘I think I cannot do better for you than leave your happiness in Lina’s
+care,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘Daphne will not be married first, of course.’
+
+‘Might they not be married on the same day?’ suggested Edgar. ‘Lina is
+to be married directly she comes of age, is she not?’
+
+‘That has been proposed,’ said Sir Vernon reluctantly, ‘but I am in no
+hurry to lose my daughter, and I don’t think Lina is eager to leave me.
+In my precarious state of health it will be hard for me to bear the
+pain of parting.’
+
+‘But, my dear Sir Vernon, she will be so near you—quite close at hand,’
+remonstrated Edgar, inwardly revolting against this selfishness, which
+would delay his own happiness as well as Goring’s.
+
+‘Don’t talk about it, Turchill,’ exclaimed Sir Vernon testily. ‘You
+don’t understand—you can’t enter into my feelings. My daughter is all
+the world to me now. What will she be when she is a wife, a mother,
+with a hundred different interests and anxieties plucking at her
+heart-strings? Why, I daresay a teething-baby would be more to her than
+her father, if I were on my death-bed.’
+
+‘Indeed, Sir Vernon, you wrong her.’
+
+‘I daresay I do. But I am devoured with jealousy when I think of her
+belonging to anyone else. It is the penalty she pays for having been
+perfect as a daughter. Our virtues, as well as our vices, are often
+scourges for our own backs. However, when the time comes I must bear
+the blow with a smiling countenance, that she may never know how hard I
+am hit. Only you can imagine I don’t want to hasten the evil hour. And
+now, as I think we understand each other, you may be off to pleasanter
+society than mine.’
+
+Edgar instantly availed himself of this permission, and hastened to the
+morning-room, where Madoline was seated at her work-table, while Daphne
+twisted herself round and round on the music-stool, now talking to her
+sister, now playing a few bars of one of Schumann’s ‘_Kinderstücken_,’
+anon picking out a popular melody she had heard the faithful Bink
+whistle as he weeded his flower-beds.
+
+She started a little at Edgar’s entrance, and ‘blushed celestial red,
+love’s proper hue,’ much to the delight of her lover, who hung out a
+rosy flag on his own side, and looked as shy as any school-girl.
+
+He shook hands with Madoline, and then went straight to the piano, and
+tried by a tender pressure of Daphne’s hand to express something of the
+rapture that was flooding his soul.
+
+‘I have seen your father, dearest,’ he said in her ear, as she went on
+lightly playing little bits of Schumann. ‘He thoroughly approves—he is
+glad.’
+
+‘Then I am glad if he is glad, and you are glad, and Madoline is glad,’
+answered Daphne, with a smile in which there was a subtle mockery
+that escaped Edgar’s perception. ‘What can I do better than please
+everybody?’
+
+‘You have made me the happiest man in creation.’
+
+‘Does not every young man say that when he is engaged?’ asked Daphne
+laughingly. ‘I believe it is a formula. And when he has been married a
+year the happiest man in creation takes to quarrelling with his wife.
+However, I hope we may not quarrel. I will try to be as good to you as
+you have been to me; and that is saying a good deal.’
+
+They lingered by the piano, Edgar pouring forth vague expressions of
+his delight, his gratitude, his intoxication of bliss. Daphne playing
+a little, and listening a little, with her eyes always on the keys,
+offering her lover only the lashes, dark brown with sparks of gold upon
+their tips, for his contemplation. But such lashes, and such eyelids,
+and such a lovely droop of the small classic head, were enough to
+satisfy a lover’s eye for longer than Edgar was required to look at
+them.
+
+By-and-by, when he had exhausted a lover’s capacity for talking
+nonsense, he made a sudden dash at the practical.
+
+‘I want you to come and see my mother, Daphne.’
+
+‘Have you told her?’
+
+‘No, not yet. There has been no opportunity, you know.’
+
+This was hardly true, since, seated opposite Mrs. Turchill at the
+breakfast-table that morning, Edgar had vainly endeavoured to frame the
+sentence which should announce his bliss, and had found an awkwardness
+in the revelation which required to be surmounted at more leisure.
+
+‘I am going to tell her directly I go home. It was better to see Sir
+Vernon first, don’t you know. And I want you and Madoline to come over
+to tea this afternoon. You could drive over to Hawksyard with Daphne
+after luncheon, couldn’t you, Madoline?’ he asked, going over to the
+work-table. ‘It would be so good of you, and would please my mother so
+very much.’
+
+‘Would it?’ asked Lina, smiling up at him. ‘Then it shall be done.’
+
+The young man lingered as long as he could, consistently with his
+performance of that duty which he felt must not be deferred beyond
+luncheon time. It was hardly a good time to choose for the revelation,
+for Mrs. Turchill was apt to be somewhat disturbed in her temper at the
+mid-day meal; her patience having been exercised by sundry defalcations
+discovered in her morning round of the house. It might be that new
+milk had been given away to unauthorised recipients, or to pensioners
+who were only entitled to receive skimmed milk; it might be an
+unexplainable evanishment of home-brewed beer: or that the principal
+oak staircase was not so slippery as it ought to be; or that the famous
+pewter dinner-service was tarnished; or a favourite fender displayed
+spots of rust; but there was generally something, some feather-weight
+of domestic care which disturbed the even balance of Mrs. Turchill’s
+mind at this hour. Like those modern scales which can be turned by an
+infinitesimal portion of a human hair, so the fine balance of Mrs.
+Turchill’s temper required but very little to alter it.
+
+Edgar rode home to Hawksyard in the clear bright winter noontide,
+feeling as much like a convicted criminal as a young man of pure
+mind and clear conscience well could feel. He went bustling into
+the dining-room, rubbing his hands, and making a great pretence of
+cheeriness. His mother was standing on the hearth-rug knitting a useful
+brown winter sock—for him, he knew. Those active knitting-needles of
+hers were always at work for him. He felt himself an ingrate, as he
+thought of her labour.
+
+‘Well, mother; lovely weather, isn’t it, so wintry and seasonable? I
+hope you have had a pleasant morning.’
+
+‘About as pleasant as I can have in a nest of vipers,’ answered Mrs.
+Turchill, frowning at her work, and intent upon turning a heel.
+
+‘What’s up now?’ asked Edgar, nothing startled by the vigour of her
+speech.
+
+‘The beer consumed at Christmas—I won’t say drunk, for gallons of it
+must have been given away—is something too dreadful to contemplate,’
+replied Mrs. Turchill.
+
+‘Never mind the beer, mother,’ answered Edgar, still rubbing his hands
+before the fire, and shifting from one foot to another in a manner that
+indicated a certain perturbation of spirit; ‘Christmas comes only once
+a year, you know, and the servants ought to enjoy themselves.’
+
+‘That’s all very well, Edgar, within proper limits; but when I see them
+stepping over the boundary line——’
+
+‘You feel that it’s time to put on the drag,’ interjected Edgar. ‘Of
+course; very right and proper. Whatever should I do without such a dear
+prudent mother to look after things?’
+
+And then, suddenly remembering that the most eager desire of his heart
+at this very moment was to substitute a foolish young wife for this
+wise and experienced housekeeper, Edgar Turchill became suddenly as
+vermilion as the most vivid cock’s-comb in his mother’s poultry-yard.
+He felt that the revelation he had to make must be blurted out somehow.
+There was no use in prancing before the fire, making such a serious
+business of warming his hands.
+
+‘I’ve been over to South Hill this morning, mother,’ he said at last,
+rather jerkily.
+
+‘Have you?’ said Mrs. Turchill curtly. ‘It seems to me you never go
+anywhere else.’
+
+‘Well, I’m afraid that’s a true bill,’ he answered, laughing with
+affected heartiness, very much as the timorous traveller whistles in a
+lonely wood. ‘I love the place, and the people who live in it. South
+Hill has been my second home ever since I was a little bit of a chap at
+Rugby. But this morning I have been there on very particular business.
+I have been having a serious talk with Sir Vernon. I wonder if you
+could guess the subject of our conversation, mother, and spare my
+blushes in telling it?’
+
+It was Mrs. Turchill’s turn to assume the cock’s-comb’s flaming hue.
+
+‘If you have done anything to blush for, Edgar, I am sorry for you,’
+she observed sternly. ‘Your father was one of the most respectable men
+in Warwickshire, and the most looked up to, or my father would not have
+allowed me to marry him.’
+
+‘You are taking me a trifle too literally, mother,’ answered Edgar,
+laughing uneasily. ‘I hope there is nothing disreputable in a man of my
+age falling in love and wanting to be married. That’s the only crime I
+have to confess this morning. Yesterday afternoon I asked Daphne to be
+my wife, and she consented; and this morning I settled it all with Sir
+Vernon. We are to be married on the same day as Goring and Madoline—at
+least, Sir Vernon said something to that effect.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Turchill freezingly. ‘Indeed! And now Miss
+Daphne has consented and Sir Vernon has consented, and the very
+wedding-day is fixed, you do me the honour to inform me. I thank you
+from my heart, Edgar, for the respect and affection, the consideration
+and regard, you have shown for me in this matter. I am not likely to
+forget your conduct.’
+
+‘Dearest mother,’ gasped Edgar affrightedly, for the icy indignation
+of his parent’s speech and manner went beyond the worst he had feared,
+‘surely you are not offended—surely——’
+
+‘But it is only what I might reasonably have expected,’ pursued Mrs.
+Turchill, ignoring the interruption. ‘It is only what I ought to
+have looked for. When a mother devotes herself day and night to her
+son; when she studies his welfare and his comfort in everything;
+when she sits up with him night after night with the measles—quite
+unnecessarily, as the doctor said at the time—and reduces herself to
+a shadow when he has the scarlatina; when she worries herself about
+him every time he gets damp feet, and endures agony every hour of the
+day while he is out shooting; this is pretty sore to be the result. He
+is caught by the first pretty face he sees, and his mother becomes a
+cipher in his estimation.’
+
+‘Believe me that is not my case, dear mother,’ protested Edgar,
+putting his arm round the matron’s waist, which she made as inflexible
+as she possibly could for the occasion, and trying to kiss her, which
+she would not allow. ‘You will never cease to be valued and dear. Do
+you suppose there is no room in my heart for you and Daphne? I know she
+is a mere child, a positive baby, to place at the head of a house which
+you have managed so cleverly all these years; but everything in this
+life must have a beginning, don’t you know, and I rely upon you for
+teaching Daphne how to manage her house.’
+
+‘That kind of thing cannot be taught, Edgar,’ answered his mother
+severely. ‘It must be the gradual growth of years in an adaptable mind.
+I don’t believe Daphne Lawford will ever be a housekeeper. It is not in
+her. You might as well expect a butterfly to sit upon its eggs with the
+patience of a farm-yard hen. However,’ sighed Mrs. Turchill, ‘you have
+chosen for yourself.’
+
+‘Did you suppose I should let anyone else choose for me in such a
+matter, mother?’
+
+‘I am sorry for my lovely stock of house-linen. The tea-cloths will get
+used in the stable; and the kitchen-cloths will be made away with by
+wholesale.’
+
+‘Never mind a few tea-cloths, mother.’
+
+‘But it is not a few, it is a great many. I daresay that out of the
+twelve dozen that are now in the linen-closet you won’t have two dozen
+sound ones a twelvemonth after your marriage.’
+
+‘I think I should survive even that loss, mother, if you were happy,’
+answered Edgar lightly.
+
+‘How could I possibly be happy knowing the waste and destruction of
+things that I have taken so much trouble to get together? I’m sure I
+feel positively ill at the idea of the best glass and china under the
+authority of a girl of eighteen; your great grandmother’s Crown Derby
+dessert-set, which I have often been told is priceless.’
+
+‘Yes, mother, by people who don’t want to buy it. If you wanted to
+sell it, you would hear a very different story. However, I don’t
+see any reason why Daphne should not be able to take care of the
+dessert-plates——’
+
+‘I have always kept chamois-leather over each plate,’ interrupted Mrs.
+Turchill, with a pensive shake of her head. ‘Will she take as much
+trouble?’
+
+‘Or why there should be waste and destruction anywhere. Daphne will not
+be the first young wife who ever had to take care of a house, and I
+know by the way she learnt to row how easy it is to teach her anything.’
+
+‘Easy to teach her to row, or to ride, or to play lawn-tennis, or to
+do anything frivolous and useless, I have no doubt,’ retorted his
+mother; ‘but I don’t believe it is in her to learn careful ways, and
+the management of servants. I only hope the waste and destruction will
+stop at the house-linen. I only hope she won’t bring ruin upon you; but
+when I think how many a young man of good means has been utterly ruined
+by an extravagant wife——’
+
+‘Upon my word, mother,’ protested Edgar, with a dash of resentment,
+feeling that this was too much, ‘you are making a perfect raven of
+yourself, instead of being cheery and pleasant, as I expected you to
+be. I’m sorry I have not been able to choose a wife more to your liking
+as a daughter-in-law; but marriage is one of the few circumstances of
+life in which selfishness is a duty, and a man must please himself at
+any hazard of displeasing other people. I don’t believe there’s a man
+who was at the Hunt Ball the other night who won’t envy me my good
+luck.’
+
+‘Very likely; since men are influenced by mere outside prettiness,’
+said Mrs. Turchill. ‘Though even there Daphne is by no means faultless.
+Her nose is too short.’
+
+‘Now, mother, you have been so good to me all my life that it would be
+a very unnatural thing if you were to begin to be unkind all at once,
+and in a crisis of my life in which I most need your love,’ pleaded
+Edgar with genuine feeling.
+
+He put his arm round his mother’s waist, which, this time, was less
+inflexible than before. He turned the matron’s face towards his, and,
+lo! her eyes were full of tears.
+
+‘It would be very strange, indeed, if I could deny you anything,’ she
+said, strangling a sob. ‘There never was a child so much indulged as
+you were. If you had cried for the moon, it would have quite worried me
+that I wasn’t able to get it for you.’
+
+‘And you would have given me a stable-lantern instead,’ answered Edgar,
+smiling. ‘Yes, best of mothers, you have always been indulgent, and you
+are going to be indulgent now, and you will take Daphne to your heart
+of hearts, and be as fond of her as if she were that baby-girl you
+lost, grown up to womanhood.’
+
+‘Don’t, Edgar, don’t!’ cried Mrs. Turchill, fairly overcome. ‘Her
+bassinet is in the little oak room. I was looking at it yesterday. I
+have never got over that loss.’
+
+‘You will think she has come back to you some day, when you have a
+little granddaughter,’ said Edgar tenderly.
+
+His mother, once reduced to the pathetic mood, was perfectly tractable.
+Edgar petted and soothed her; protested somewhat recklessly that the
+chief desire of Daphne’s life was to gain her affection; announced
+the intended afternoon visit; and obtained his mother’s promise of a
+gracious reception.
+
+When Miss Lawford and her sister arrived at about half-past four the
+drawing-room wore a hospitable aspect; a huge log burning in the
+Elizabethan fire-place; flowers of a homely kind—chrysanthemums and
+Christmas roses, crocuses and snow-drops—about the rooms; and an
+old-fashioned silver tea-tray on an old-fashioned sofa-table, nothing
+of Adam or Chippendale or Queen Anne about it, but a good old ponderous
+piece of rosewood furniture, almost as heavy as a house.
+
+Mrs. Turchill received her guests with gracious smiles and with a
+heartiness that took Daphne by surprise. She had made up her mind that
+she was going to be snubbed, and a dash of timidity gave a new grace
+to her beauty. She was very grave, and seemed, to Mrs. Turchill’s
+scrutinising eye, to be fully awakened to the responsibilities of her
+position. Could she but remain in this better frame of mind she might
+fairly be trusted with the Derby dessert-service and the piled-up
+treasures of the linen-closet.
+
+Mrs. Turchill made Daphne sit on the sofa by her side while she poured
+out the tea, and was positively affectionate in her manner.
+
+‘You will be making tea in this pot before long,’ she said, with a
+loving glance at the fluted teapot. ‘It is not a good pourer. You’ll
+have to learn the knack of holding it exactly in the right position.’
+
+‘I hope you are not sorry,’ faltered Daphne in a very low voice,
+meaning about the event generally, not with any special reference to
+the teapot.
+
+‘Well, my dear, I am too truthful a woman to deny that it was a blow,’
+returned Mrs. Turchill candidly. Edgar had kept out of the way when the
+sisters arrived, wishing his mother to have Daphne all to herself for a
+little while. ‘I suppose that kind of thing must always be a blow to a
+mother. “My son’s my son till he gets him a wife,” you know.’
+
+‘I hope Edgar will never be any less your son than he is at this
+moment,’ said Daphne. ‘I should not like him so well as I do if thought
+his regard for me could make him one shade less devoted to you.’
+
+‘Well, my dear, time will show,’ replied Mrs. Turchill doubtfully. ‘As
+a rule young wives are very selfish; they expect to monopolise their
+husbands’ affection. All I hope is that you love Edgar as he deserves
+to be loved. There never was a worthier young man, and no girl could
+hope for a better husband than he will make.’
+
+To this exhortation Daphne replied nothing. She sat with downcast eyes,
+stirring her tea; and Mrs. Turchill, taking this silence for maidenly
+reserve, transferred her attentions to Madoline.
+
+‘I am so sorry Mr. Goring did not drive over with you,’ she said. ‘I
+quite expected him.’
+
+‘You are very kind,’ answered Lina. ‘He has gone to London. I had a
+telegram from Euston Station an hour ago. Gerald has some business to
+settle with his London lawyers, and is likely to be away for some days.’
+
+‘I’m afraid you must find South Hill very dull in his absence,’
+suggested Mrs. Turchill politely.
+
+‘I miss him very much; but I don’t think I am very dull. My father
+occupies a good deal of my time; and then there is Daphne, who has
+generally plenty to say for herself.’
+
+‘Meaning that I am an insatiable chatterer,’ said Daphne, laughing.
+‘I’m afraid it was Dibb—I mean Martha, an old schoolfellow of mine—who
+got me into the habit of talking so much.’
+
+‘Was she a great talker?’
+
+‘Quite the contrary. She rarely opened her mouth except to put
+something into it, so I acquired the pernicious habit of talking for
+two.’
+
+Edgar now came in, and seeing Daphne and his mother seated side by side
+upon the sofa, felt himself exalted to the seventh heaven of tranquil
+joy. This and this only was needed to fill his cup of bliss: that his
+mother should be content, that life should flow on smoothly in the old
+grooves.
+
+‘Well, Daphne, how do you like the look of Hawksyard in the winter?’
+
+‘I think it is quite the nicest old place in the world. I haven’t seen
+much of the world; but I can’t imagine a more interesting old house.’
+
+‘You will like it better and better as you become acquainted with
+it,’ said Mrs. Turchill. ‘It is one of the most convenient houses I
+ever saw, and I have seen a good many in my time. My husband’s mother
+was a capital housekeeper, and she did not rest till she had made the
+domestic arrangements as near perfection as was possible in her time. I
+have tried to follow in her footsteps.’
+
+‘And to make perfection still more perfect,’ said Edgar.
+
+‘There are modern inventions and improvements, Edgar, which your
+grandmother knew nothing about. Not that I hold with them all. If you
+are not tied for time,’ added Mrs. Turchill, addressing herself to the
+two young ladies, ‘I should very much like to show Daphne the domestic
+offices. It would give her an idea of what she will have to deal with
+by-and-by.’
+
+Daphne, who knew about as much as a butterfly knows of the management
+of a house, smiled faintly but said nothing. She had come to Hawksyard
+determined to make herself pleasing to Mrs. Turchill, if it were
+possible, for Edgar’s sake.
+
+‘I ventured to tell them to take out the horses,’ said Edgar, ‘knowing
+that you don’t dine till eight.’
+
+‘I shall be pleased to stay as long as Mrs. Turchill likes,’ answered
+Madoline; whereupon the matron, acknowledging this speech with a
+gracious bend, rose from her sofa, took her key-basket from the table,
+and led the way to the corridor in which opened those china and linen
+stores which were the supreme delight of her soul.
+
+Swelling with pride and the consciousness of duty done, she displayed
+and descanted on her treasures and the convenient arrangement thereof;
+the old diamond-cut glass; the Bow, the Staffordshire, the Swansea, the
+Derby cups and saucers, and plates and dishes—crockery bought in the
+common way of life, and now of inestimable value. She showed her goodly
+piles of linen and damask, which a Flemish housewife might have envied.
+She led her guests to the dairy, which in its smaller and humbler
+way was as neat and dainty and ornamental as Her Majesty’s dairy at
+Frogmore. She talked learnedly of butter-making, cream-cheeses, and the
+disposal of skim milk. Daphne wondered to find how large a science was
+this domestic management of which she knew absolutely nothing.
+
+‘A house of this kind requires a great deal of care and a great deal
+of thought,’ said Mrs. Turchill with a solemn air. ‘Old servants are a
+great comfort, but they have their drawbacks, and require to be kept
+in check. With a young, inexperienced mistress I’m afraid they will be
+tempted to take many liberties.’
+
+Mrs. Turchill concluded her speech with a gentle sigh, and a regretful
+glance at Daphne—not an unfriendly look, by any means; but it expressed
+her foreboding of future ruin for the house of Hawksyard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+‘AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY DAY OR NIGHT.’
+
+
+The next three days passed somewhat slowly at South Hill. Unselfish
+as Madoline was, even her delight in Daphne’s engagement could not
+altogether compensate for Gerald’s absence. Life without him hung
+heavily. She missed him at all those accustomed hours which they had
+spent together. In the bright noontide, when he rode over fresh and
+full of vivacity after a late breakfast; in the afternoon dusk, when
+they had been wont to waste time so pleasantly beside the low wood
+fire; in the evening; always. He had been away for three days, and she
+had received only one shabby little letter—just a few feeble sentences
+explaining that he had been obliged to run up to London at an hour’s
+notice to see his lawyers upon some dry-as-dust business relating to
+his Stock Exchange investments. He hoped to settle it all speedily, and
+come back to Warwickshire. The letter gave her very little comfort.
+
+‘I am afraid he is being worried,’ she said to Daphne, after she had
+read this brief communication two or three times over. ‘It is not like
+one of his letters.’
+
+The week after the ball began with one of those dull Sundays which come
+down upon country life like an atmosphere of gloom, and seem to blot
+out all the pleasantness of creation. A drizzling Scotch-misty Sabbath,
+painfully suggestive of Glasgow and the Free Kirk. Madoline and Daphne
+walked to church, waterproofed to the eyes, and assisted sadly at a
+damp service; the whole congregation smelling of macintoshes; the drip
+drip from umbrellas on the encaustic pavement audible in the pauses
+of the Liturgy. It was a rule at South Hill that horses and coachmen
+should rest on the seventh day, save under direst pressure. Neither of
+the sisters objected to a wet walk. Edgar met them at church, having
+tramped over through mud and rain, much to the disgust of his mother,
+who deemed that to be absent from one’s parish church on a Sunday
+morning was a social misdemeanour not to be atoned for by the most
+fervent worship in a strange tabernacle. He joined Lina and her sister
+in the porch, and walked home with them by moist fields and a swollen
+Avon, whose fringe of willows never looked more funereal than on this
+dull wintry noontide, when the scant bare shoots stood straight up
+against a sky of level gray.
+
+‘Any news from Goring?’ asked Edgar, by way of making himself agreeable.
+
+‘Not since I saw you last. I fancy he must be very busy. He is usually
+such a good correspondent.’
+
+‘Busy!’ cried Edgar, laughing heartily at the idea. ‘What can he have
+to be busy about?—unless it’s the fit of a new suit of clothes, or
+some original idea in shooting-boots which he wants carried out, or
+the choice of a new horse; but, for that matter, I believe he doesn’t
+seriously care what he rides. Busy, indeed! He can’t know what work
+means. His bread was buttered for him on both sides, before he was
+born.’
+
+‘Isn’t that rather a juvenile notion of yours, Edgar?’ asked Madoline.
+‘I believe the richest people are often the busiest. Property has its
+duties as well as its rights.’
+
+‘No doubt. But a rich man can always take the rights for his own share,
+and pay somebody else to perform the duties,’ answered Edgar shrewdly.
+‘And I should think Goring was about the last man to let his property
+be a source of care to him.’
+
+‘In this instance I am afraid he is being worried about it,’ said Lina
+decisively; and with a look which seemed to say, ‘nobody has any right
+to have an opinion about my lover.’
+
+The day was a long one, even with the assistance of Edgar in the task
+of getting through it. Daphne, considerably sobered by her engagement,
+behaved irreproachably all the afternoon and evening; but she stifled a
+good many yawns, until the effort made her eyes water.
+
+Her father had been unusually kind to her since the announcement of
+her betrothal. All his anxieties about her—and it had been the habit
+of his mind to regard her as a source of trouble and difficulty, or
+even of future woe—were now set at rest. Married in the early bloom
+of her girlhood to such a man as Edgar, all her life to come would be
+so fenced round and protected, so sheltered and guarded by love and
+honour, that perversity itself could scarce go astray.
+
+‘Daphne’s mother was spoiled before I married her,’ he told himself,
+remembering the misery of his second marriage. ‘If I had won her before
+her heart was corrupted our lives might have been different.’
+
+It seemed to him, looking at the matter soberly, that there could be no
+better alliance for his younger daughter than this with Edgar Turchill.
+He had seen them together continually, in a companionship which seemed
+full of pleasure for both: boating together, at lawn-tennis, at
+billiards, sympathising, as it appeared to him from his superficial
+point of view, in every thought and feeling. It never occurred to him
+that this was a mere surface sympathy, and that the hidden deeps of
+Daphne’s mind and soul were far beyond the plummet-line of Edgar’s
+sympathy or comprehension. Sir Vernon had made up his mind that his
+younger daughter was a frivolous butterfly-being, who needed only
+frivolous pleasures and girlish amusements to make her happy.
+
+Everybody, or almost everybody, approved of Daphne’s engagement. It was
+pleasant to the girl to live for a little while in an atmosphere of
+praise. Even Aunt Rhoda, upon whose being Daphne had exercised the kind
+of influence which some people feel when there is a cat in the room,
+even Aunt Rhoda professed herself delighted. She came over between the
+showers and the church services upon this particular Sunday, on purpose
+to tell Daphne how very heartily she approved of her conduct.
+
+‘You have acted wisely for once in your life,’ she said sententiously;
+‘I hope it is the beginning of many wise acts. I suppose you will be
+married at the same time as Lina. The double wedding will have a very
+brilliant effect, and will save your father ever so much trouble and
+expense.’
+
+‘Oh no; I should not like that,’ cried Daphne hurriedly.
+
+‘You wouldn’t like a double wedding!’ ejaculated Mrs. Ferrers
+indignantly. ‘Why, what a vain, arrogant little person you must be. I
+suppose you fancy your own importance would be lessened if you were
+married at the same time as your elder sister?’
+
+‘No, no, Aunt; indeed, it is not that. I am quite content to seem of no
+account beside Lina. I love her far too dearly to envy her superiority.
+But—if—when—I am married I should like it to be very quietly—no people
+looking on—no fuss—no fine gowns. When my father and Edgar have made
+up their minds that the proper time has come, I should like just to
+walk into my uncle’s church early some morning, with papa and Lina, and
+for Edgar to meet us there, just as quietly as if we were poor people,
+and for no one to be told anything about it.’
+
+‘What a romantic schoolgirlish notion!’ said Mrs. Ferrers
+contemptuously. ‘Such a marriage would be a discredit to your family;
+and I should think it most unlikely my brother would ever give his
+consent to such a hole-and-corner way of doing things.’
+
+The one person at South Hill who absolutely refused to smile upon
+Daphne’s engagement was Madoline’s faithful Mowser. That devoted female
+received the announcement with shrugs and ominous shakings of a head
+which carried itself as if it were the living temple of wisdom, and in
+a manner incomplete without that helmet of Minerva which obviously of
+right belonged to it.
+
+‘You don’t seem as pleased as the rest of us at the notion of this
+second marriage,’ said good-tempered Mrs. Spicer, housekeeper and cook,
+to whom ‘the family’ was the central point of the universe; sun, moon,
+and stars, earth and ocean, and the residue of mankind, being merely so
+much furniture created to make ‘the family’ comfortable.
+
+‘I hear and see and say nothing,’ answered Mowser, as oracular in most
+of her utterances as Friar Bacon’s brazen head. ‘Time will show.’
+
+‘Well, all I can say is,’ said Jinman, ‘that our Miss Daphne is an
+uncommon pretty girl, and deserves a good husband. She has just that
+spice of devilry in her which I like in a woman. Your even-tempered
+girls are too insipid for my taste.’
+
+‘I suppose you would have admired the spice of devilry in Miss Daphne’s
+mar,’ retorted Mowser venomously, ‘which made her run away from her
+husband.’
+
+‘No, Mrs. Mowser; I draw the line at that. A man may want to get rid
+of his wife, but he don’t like her to take the initial’—Mr. Jinman
+meant initiative—‘and bolt. A spice of devilry is all very well, but
+one doesn’t want the entire animal. I like a shake of the grater in my
+negus, but I don’t desire the whole nutmeg. But I do think that it’s a
+low-minded thing to cast up Miss Daphne’s mar whenever the young lady’s
+talked about. Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’
+
+‘Well, Mr. Jinman,’ said Mowser, ‘all I hope is, that Miss Daphne will
+carry through her engagement now she’s made it. She’s welcome to her
+own sweetheart, as far as I am concerned, so long as she doesn’t hanker
+after other people’s.’
+
+The phrase sounded vague, and neither Mr. Jinman, nor Mrs. Spicer, nor
+the coachman (who had dropped in to tea and toast and a poached egg
+or two in the housekeeper’s room) had any clear idea of what Mowser
+meant, except that it was something ill-natured. On that point there
+was no room to doubt.
+
+Another week wore on, the second after the ball, and Gerald Goring
+had not yet returned. He wrote every other day, telling Madoline all
+he had been doing; the picture-galleries and theatres he had visited,
+the clubs at which he had dined; yet in all these letters of his,
+affectionate as they were, there was a tone which sustained in Lina’s
+mind the idea that her lover was in some way troubled or worried. The
+few words which gave rise to this impression were slight enough; she
+hardly knew how or why the notion had entered her mind, but it was
+there, and remained there, and it increased her anxiety for his return
+to an almost painful degree. While she was expecting him daily and
+hourly, a much longer letter arrived, which on the first reading almost
+broke her heart:
+
+ ‘MY DEAR ONE,—I write in tremendous excitement and flurry of mind to
+ tell you something which I fear may displease you; yet at the very
+ beginning I will disarm your wrath by saying that if you put a veto
+ upon this intention of mine it shall be instantly abandoned. Subject
+ to this, dear love, I am going, in hot haste, to Canada. Don’t be
+ startled, Lina. It is no more nowadays than going to Scotland. Men I
+ know go across for the salmon-fishing every autumn, and are absent
+ so short a time that their friends hardly miss them from the beaten
+ tracks at home.
+
+ ‘And now I will tell you what has put this Canadian idea into my
+ head. I have for some time been feeling a little below par—mopish,
+ lymphatic, disinclined for exertion of any kind. My holiday in the
+ Orkneys was a _dolce far niente_ business, which did me no real good.
+ I went the other day to a famous doctor in Cavendish Square, a man
+ who puts our prime ministers on their legs when they are inclined to
+ drop, like tired cab horses, under the burden of the public weal. He
+ ausculted me carefully, found me sound in wind and limb, but nerves
+ and muscles alike in need of bracing. “You want change of scene
+ and occupation,” he said, “and a climate that will make you exert
+ yourself. Go to Vienna and skate.” I daresay this would have been
+ good advice for a man who had never seen Vienna; but as I know that
+ brilliant capital by heart, with all its virtues, and a few of its
+ vices, I rejected it. “Please yourself,” said my physician, pocketing
+ his fee; “but I recommend complete change, and the hardest climate
+ you can bear.” I do not feel sure that I intended to take his advice,
+ or should have thought any more about it; but I happened to meet Lord
+ Loftus Berwick, the Duke of Bamborough’s youngest son, and an old Eton
+ chum of mine, in the smoking-room at the Reform that very evening,
+ and he told me he was just off to Canada, dilated enthusiastically
+ upon the delights of that wintry region, and the various sports
+ congenial to the month of February. He goes _viâ_ New York, Delaware
+ and Hudson Railway to Montreal, thence to Quebec, and from Quebec by
+ the Intercolonial Railway to Rimouski, where he is to charter a small
+ schooner and cross the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Natashquan
+ River, which river belongs to two particular friends of his, both
+ distinguished comedians, and men of unbounded popularity on each side
+ of the Atlantic. Here Loftus proposes to hunt cariboo, moose, elk, and
+ I don’t know what else. But before he puts on his snow-shoes, loads
+ his sledges, and harnesses his dogs for those happy hunting-grounds,
+ he is going to revel in the more civilised and sophisticated pleasures
+ of a Canadian winter, curling-clubs, sleigh-rides around the mountain
+ at Montreal, tobogganing at the Falls of Montmorenci, near Quebec, and
+ so on. Just the thing for me, thought I—a hard climate, only about
+ eight days’ voyage—if my dearest did not object to my being away from
+ my natural place at her feet for five or six weeks. At my hinting a
+ wish to accompany him Loftus became still more enthusiastic, and was
+ eager to have the whole thing settled that moment. And now, love, it
+ is for you to decide. I think the run would do me good; but perish the
+ thought of benefit to me if it must be bought at the price of pain to
+ you. Loftus is going in the Cunard, which leaves Liverpool the day
+ after to-morrow. Telegraph your wishes, and be assured beforehand of
+ obedience from your devoted slave,
+
+  ‘GERALD GORING.’
+
+Madoline’s first thoughts were of the pain of being parted from her
+lover, whose presence had for so long been the sunshine of her days,
+and so much a part of her life, that she seemed scarcely to live while
+he was away from her. Existence was reduced to a mere mechanical moving
+about, and doing duties which had lost all their savour. But these
+first thoughts, being selfish, were swiftly succeeded in a mind so
+entirely unselfish by other considerations. If it were for Gerald’s
+good that he should go to the other end of the world, that they should
+be parted for much longer than the five or six weeks of which he spoke
+so lightly, it would not have been in Madoline’s nature to desire him
+to forego even a possible advantage. She had fancied sometimes of late
+that he was occasionally dull and low-spirited; and now this letter
+explained all. He was out of health. He had been leading too quiet
+and womanish a life, no doubt, in his willingness to spend his days
+in her society. He had foregone all those hardy exercises and field
+sports which are so necessary to a man who has no serious work in life.
+Madoline’s telegram ran thus:
+
+‘Go by all means, if you think the change will do you good. I tremble
+at the idea of your crossing the sea at this time of the year. Let me
+see you before you go. If you cannot come here, I will ask my aunt to
+go to London with me that I may at least bid you good-bye.’
+
+The answer came as quickly as electricity could bring it, and although
+laconic, was satisfactory: ‘I will be with you about five o’clock this
+afternoon.’
+
+‘Dear fellow, how little he thinks of the trouble of travelling so many
+miles to please me,’ thought Madoline; and the idea of her lover’s
+affection sustained her against the pain of parting.
+
+‘Next year I shall have the right to go wherever he goes,’ she told
+herself.
+
+Daphne heard of the Canadian expedition, but said so little about it
+that Lina wondered at her coolness.
+
+‘I thought you would have been more surprised,’ she said.
+
+‘Did you? Why, there is really nothing startling or uncommon in the
+idea,’ answered Daphne smilingly. ‘This rushing about the world for
+sport seems the most fashionable thing among young men with plenty of
+money. The Society Journals are always telling us how Lord This or Sir
+John That has gone to the Rockies to shoot wild sheep, or to the North
+Pole for bears, or to Hungary or Wallachia, or the Balkan range. The
+beaten tracks count for nothing nowadays.’
+
+When the afternoon came, Lina was alone to receive her lover. Daphne
+had been seized with a dutiful impulse towards her aunt, and had gone
+to drink tea at the Rectory, with Edgar in attendance upon her.
+
+‘Won’t you defer your duty-visit till to-morrow, and wish Gerald
+good-bye?’ asked Lina, when Daphne proposed the expedition.
+
+‘No, dear; you can do that for me. This is an occasion on which you
+ought to have him all to yourself. You will have so much to say to each
+other.’
+
+‘If it were mother, she would occupy all the time in begging him to
+wear flannels, put cork soles in all his boots, and avoid damp beds,’
+said Edgar laughing. ‘Now, Daphne, put on your hat as quick as you can.
+It’s a lovely afternoon for a walk across the fields. If this frost
+continues we shall have skating presently.’
+
+The daylight faded slowly; a bright frosty day, a clear and rosy
+sunset. Lina sat by the pretty hearth in her morning-room, and exactly
+as the clock struck five the footman brought in her dainty little
+tea-tray, set out the table before the fire, and lighted three or four
+wax-candles in the old Sèvres candelabra on the mantelpiece. Here she
+and her lover would be secure from the interruption of callers, which
+they could not be if in the drawing-room.
+
+Five minutes after the hour there came the sound of wheels upon the
+gravel drive, a loud ring at the bell, and in the next instant the door
+of the morning-room was opened, and Gerald came in, looking bulkier
+than usual in his furred travelling coat.
+
+‘Dear Gerald, this is so good of you!’ said Madoline, rising to welcome
+him.
+
+‘Dearest!’ he took both her hands, and stood looking at her in
+the firelight, with a countenance full of tenderness—a mournful
+tenderness—as if he were saddened by the thought of parting. ‘You are
+not angry with me for leaving you for a few weeks?’
+
+‘Angry, when you are told the change is necessary for your health! How
+could you think me so selfish? Let me look at you. Yes; you are looking
+ill—pale and wan. Gerald, you have been ill, seriously ill, perhaps,
+since you left here, and you would not tell me for fear of alarming me.
+I am sure that it is so. Your letters were so hurried, so different
+from——’
+
+‘My dear girl, you are mistaken. I told you the exact truth about
+myself when I owned to feeling mopish and depressed. I have had no
+actual illness; but I feel that a run across the Atlantic will revive
+and invigorate me.’
+
+‘And it is quite right of you to go, if the voyage is not dangerous in
+this weather.’
+
+‘Dear love, it is no more dangerous than calling a hansom to take one
+down Regent Street. The hansom may come to grief somehow, or there may
+be a gale between Liverpool and New York; but there is hardly any safer
+way a man can dispose of his life than to trust himself to a Cunard
+steamer.’
+
+‘And do you think you will enjoy yourself in Canada?’
+
+‘As much as I can enjoy myself anywhere, away from you. According to
+my friend Loftus, a Canadian winter is the acme of bliss; and if the
+winter should break up early, we may contrive to get a little run into
+the Hudson’s Bay country, and a glimpse of the Rockies before we come
+home.’
+
+‘That sounds as if you meant to stay rather a long time,’ said Lina,
+with a touch of anxiety.
+
+‘Indeed, no, dear. At latest I shall be with you before April is half
+over. Think what is to happen early in May.’
+
+‘My coming of age. It seems so absurd to come of age at twenty-five,
+when one is almost an old woman.’
+
+‘An old woman verily. A girl as fresh in youthful purity as if her
+cheek still wore the baby-bloom of seventeen summers! But have you
+forgotten something else that is to happen next May, Lina—our wedding?’
+
+‘There has been nothing fixed about that,’ faltered Madoline ‘except,
+perhaps, that it is to be this year. My father has not said a word as
+to the actual time, and I know that he wants to keep me as long as he
+can.’
+
+‘And I think you know that I want to have you at the Abbey as soon as I
+can. I am getting to loathe that big house, for lack of your presence
+to transform it into a home. We must be married in May, dearest.
+Remember we have only been waiting for you to come of age, and for all
+dry-as-dust questions of property to be settled. If we had been Darby
+the gardener and Joan the dairymaid, we should have been married four
+years ago, shouldn’t we, Lina?’
+
+‘I suppose so,’ she answered, blushing, and taking refuge in the
+occupation of pouring out the tea, adjusting the egg-shell cups
+and saucers, the slender little rat-tailed spoons, all the dainty
+affectations and quaintnesses of high-art tea-drinking, ‘Darby and Joan
+are always so imprudent.’
+
+‘Yes, but they are often happy. They marry foolishly, and perhaps
+starve a little after marriage; but they wed while the first bloom is
+on their love. Come, Lina, say that we shall be married early in May.’
+
+‘I can promise nothing without my father’s consent. My aunt was
+suggesting that Daphne and I should be married on the same day.’
+
+‘Did she?’ asked Gerald, his head bent, his hands engaged with his cup
+and saucer. ‘Two victims led to the altar: Iphigenia and Polyxena, and
+no likelihood of a hind being substituted for either young lady. Don’t
+you think there is a dash of vulgarity in a double wedding: a desire
+to make the very most of the event, to intensify the parade: two sets
+of bridesmaids, two displays of presents, two honeymoon departures:
+all the tawdriness and show and artificiality of a modern wedding
+exaggerated by duplication?’
+
+‘I think that is rather Daphne’s idea. She begs that she and Edgar may
+be married very quietly, without fuss of any kind.’
+
+‘I had no idea that Daphne was capable of such wisdom. I thought she
+would have asked for four-and-twenty bridesmaids,’ said Gerald with a
+cynical laugh.
+
+‘She is much more sensible than you have ever given her credit for
+being,’ answered Madoline, a little offended at his tone. ‘She has
+behaved sweetly since her engagement.’
+
+‘And—you—think—she—is—happy?’
+
+How slowly he said this, stirring his tea all the while, as if the
+words were spoken mechanically, his thoughts being wide-away from them.
+
+‘Do you suppose I should be satisfied if I were not sure, in my own
+mind, of her happiness? How can she fail to be happy? She is engaged to
+a thoroughly good man, who adores her; and if—if she is not quite as
+deep in love with him as he is with her, there is no doubt that her
+affection for him will increase and strengthen every day.’
+
+‘Naturally. He will flatter and fool her till—were it only from sheer
+vanity—she will ultimately find him necessary to her existence. I
+knew he had only to persevere in order to win her. I told him so last
+summer.’
+
+‘And Edgar is grateful to you for encouraging him when he was inclined
+to despair. He told me so yesterday. But do not let us talk of Daphne
+all the time. I want you to tell me about yourself. How good it was of
+you to come down to say good-bye!’
+
+‘Could I do less, dearest? Good-byes are always painful, even when the
+parting is to be of the briefest, as in this case: but from the moment
+I knew you wished to see me it was my duty to come.’
+
+‘Can you stay here to-night?’
+
+‘I can stay exactly ten minutes, and no more. I have to catch the
+half-past six express.’
+
+‘You are not going to the Abbey?’
+
+‘No. I have written to my steward, and I am such a _roi fainéant_ at
+the best of times that my coming or going makes very little difference.
+I leave the new hot-houses under your care and governance, subject
+to MacCloskie, who governs you. All their contents are to be for the
+separate use and maintenance of your rooms while I am away.’
+
+‘I shall be smothered with flowers.’
+
+‘May there be never a thorn among them! And now, love, adieu. This
+time to-morrow I shall be steaming out of the Mersey. I have to see
+that Dickson has not come to grief in the preparation of my outfit.
+A man wants a world of strange things for Canada, according to the
+outfitters. My own love, good-bye!’
+
+‘Good-bye, Gerald dearest, best, good-bye. Every wind that blows will
+make me miserable while you are on the sea. You’ll let me know directly
+you arrive, won’t you? You’ll put me out of my misery as soon as you
+can?’
+
+‘I’ll cable the hour I land.’
+
+‘That will be so good of you,’ she said, going with him to the door.
+
+How calm and clear the frosty evening looked! how vivid the steely
+stars up yonder above the feathery tree-tops! how peaceful and happy
+all the world!
+
+‘God bless you, dear one!’ said each to each, as they kissed their
+parting kiss—both hearts so heavy; but one so pure and free from guile;
+the other so weighed down by secret cares that could not be told.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+‘AY FLETH THE TIME, IT WOL NO MAN ABIDE.’
+
+
+Nearly six months had gone since that wintry parting, when the lovers
+clasped hands and blessed each other under the sign of Aries; and now
+it was midsummer, and all the fields were green, and the limes were
+breaking into blossom, and the hawthorn-flower was dead, and the last
+of the blue-bells had faded, and all the white orchard-blooms, the
+tender loveliness of spring, belonged to the past; for the beauty of
+earth and nature is a thing of perpetual change, so closely allied with
+death that in every rapture there is the beginning of a regret.
+
+Gerald Goring had returned, not quite so soon as he had promised beside
+the winter hearth, but in time to offer birthday greetings to Lina,
+and to assist in those legal preparations and argumentations which
+preceded the marriage settlement; in this case a formidable document,
+involving large interests, and full of consideration for children and
+grandchildren yet unborn; for daughters dying unmarried, or requiring
+to be dowered for marriage; for sons who might have to make marriage
+settlements of their own. There was to be a complete family history,
+put hypothetically, in Miss Lawford’s marriage settlement.
+
+Vainly had Lina tried to dower her sister with half, or at least some
+portion of her own wealth. Daphne obstinately refused to accept any
+such boon; and Edgar as obstinately sustained her in her determination.
+
+‘I won’t accept a penny,’ said she.
+
+‘I don’t want a halfpenny with her,’ said he; a refusal which
+Mrs. Turchill considered supreme folly on the part of son and
+daughter-in-law; for what improvements might have been made at
+Hawksyard with a few spare thousands, whereas her son’s income, though
+ample for all the needs and comforts of this life, left no margin for
+building.
+
+‘Why should not Daphne have a range of hot-houses like those Mr. Goring
+has built for her sister?’ argued Mrs. Turchill. ‘Or why should not you
+rebuild the stables, which are dreadfully old-fashioned?’
+
+‘I would not change the dear old fashion for worlds, mother, now that
+I have made every sanitary improvement,’ answered Edgar; ‘least of all
+would I improve Hawksyard into a modern house with Goring’s money.’
+
+‘But it is not Mr. Goring’s money that is offered; it is Miss
+Lawford’s.’
+
+‘That is the same thing. The loss would be his. Don’t talk any more
+about it, mother; Daphne and I have made up our minds.’
+
+This was decisive; for Mrs. Turchill knew that Daphne’s word was
+Edgar’s law. She was reconciled to the idea of the marriage, but in
+her confidences with Deborah, she could not help talking of her son’s
+attachment as an infatuation.
+
+Gerald had come back considerably improved in health and spirits by
+his Canadian and Hudson’s Bay adventures. He had crossed the Turtle
+Mountain, and the arid plains beyond, and from the crest of one of the
+Sweet Grass Hills had seen the rugged and snowy outline of the Rockies,
+standing out in full relief against the western sky-line. He had shot a
+bear or two, and had some experience of wolves. He had eaten pemmican,
+and ridden a woolly horse; he had slept at a Hudson’s Bay station, and
+had passed a night or two, half-frozen and wholly awake, under canvas.
+Variety and adventure had done him good physically and mentally; and he
+told himself that of that fever which had tormented him when he left
+England—a fever of foolish longings and fond regrets, idle thoughts
+of things that might have been—he was cured wholly. Yet who shall say
+whether time might not show some resemblance between this cure and that
+of a dangerous lunatic, who is discharged from Bedlam a sane man, and
+who cuts his mother’s head off with a carving-knife a fortnight after
+his release?
+
+The double wedding was to take place in October. Nothing could induce
+Sir Vernon to consent to an earlier date.
+
+‘I shall lose my darling soon enough,’ he said, ignoring Daphne in his
+calculations of loss. ‘Let me keep her till the end of the summer. Let
+us spend this one summer together. Who knows that it may not be my
+last?’
+
+Any wish expressed by her father would have governed Madoline’s
+conduct, and this wish, expressed so stringently, could not be
+disregarded. Sir Vernon was frequently ailing, in a languid
+half-hearted way, which looked like hypochondriasis, but might be
+actual disease, and a part of that organic evil which was never
+clearly described. His doctor recommended an entire change of
+scene—Switzerland, the Engadine, if he could make up his mind to travel
+so far, and to be satisfied with the simpler diet and accommodation
+of that skyey world. There was a good deal of discussion, and it was
+ultimately settled that Sir Vernon and his daughters should start for
+Switzerland at the end of June, and move quietly about there, studying
+the invalid’s pleasure in all things. Sir Vernon set his face against
+the Engadine, preferring the more civilised shores of Lake Leman, which
+he knew by heart.
+
+Daphne had never been beyond Fontainebleau, and was enraptured at the
+idea of seeing snow-clad mountains and strange people. Gerald and Edgar
+were to be of the party, and they were only to return to England in
+time for the double wedding. The sisters were to be married on the same
+day, after all. That had been settled for them arbitrarily by family
+and friends, despite Daphne’s objection; and Warwickshire people were
+already beginning to speculate upon the details of the ceremony, and
+to wonder what dean or bishop would be privileged to tie the knot,
+assisted by the Rev. Marmaduke Ferrers.
+
+Daphne’s conduct since her engagement had been unobjectionable. Nobody
+could deny her sweetness, or could fail to approve the sobriety which
+had come over her manners and conversation. Her hot fits and cold fits,
+her high spirits and low spirits, were all over. She was uniformly
+amiable and uniformly grave—not taking rapturous pleasure in anything,
+but seemingly contented with her lot in life, devoted in her affection
+to her sister, unvaryingly kind to her lover. Edgar was never tired of
+thanking heaven for the blessedness of his lot. He had remitted his
+tenants five-and-twenty per cent. of their March rents; not that there
+was any special need for such indulgence, but because he longed to be
+generous to somebody, and to disseminate his overflowing joy.
+
+‘I shall do the same for you next October, in honour of my marriage,’
+he said in his speech at the audit dinner; ‘and after that I shall want
+all the money you can pay me, as a family man.’
+
+Madoline, utterly happy in her lover’s society, after that interval of
+severance which had seemed so long and dreary, cared very little where
+their lives were to be spent, so long as they were to be together. Yet
+the idea of revisiting Lake Leman—which she had seen and loved seven
+years ago in a quiet pilgrimage with her father—with Gerald for her
+attendant and companion, had a certain fascination.
+
+‘It is rather like anticipating our honeymoon, is it not, dear?’ he
+asked laughingly. ‘But when the honeymoon comes we shall find some new
+world to explore.’
+
+‘Would you like to take me to the Red River?’
+
+‘I think that would be a shade too rough, even for your endurance.
+The Italian lakes, and a winter in Rome, would suit us better. It is
+all very well for a man to travel in a district where he has to cover
+his face with a muffler, and head the driving snow, till he is nearly
+suffocated with his frozen breath, and has to get himself thawed
+carefully at the first camp-fire; but that kind of experience lasts
+a long time, and it is pleasing to fall back upon the old habit of
+luxurious travelling, and to ride in a _coupé_ through Mont Cenis or
+St. Gotthard, and to arrive at one’s destination without any large risk
+of being swallowed whole in a swamp, or burned alive in a prairie fire.’
+
+‘I shall delight in seeing Rome with you,’ Madoline answered gently.
+
+‘I thought you would like it. I really know my Rome. It is a subject I
+have studied thoroughly, and I shall love playing cicerone for you.’
+
+It was midsummer, a perfect midsummer evening, the placid sky still
+faintly tinted with rose and amethyst yonder where the sun had just
+gone down behind the undulating line of willows. The little town of
+Stratford lay in its valley, folded in a purple cloud, only the slender
+church spire rising clear and sharp against that tranquil evening sky.
+Daphne had stolen away from Madoline and Gerald, who were sitting on
+the terrace, while Edgar, chained to his post in the dining-room by
+a lengthy monologue upon certain political difficulties, with which
+Sir Vernon was pleased to favour him, vainly longed for liberty to
+rejoin his idol. She had put on her hat, and had set out upon a lonely
+pilgrimage to Stratford. They were all to leave South Hill early
+to-morrow, and it was Daphne’s fancy to bid good-bye to the church
+which sheltered those ashes it were the worst of sacrilege to disturb.
+
+It was an idle fancy, no doubt, engendered of a mind prone to idle
+thoughts; but Daphne, having no urgent occupation for her time this
+evening, fancied she had a right to indulge it.
+
+‘I am going for a little walk,’ she had told Edgar, as she left the
+dining-room; ‘don’t fidget yourself about me.’
+
+From which moment poor Edgar had been in agonies of restlessness,
+turning an ear deafer than any adder’s to Sir Vernon’s disquisition
+upon the critical state of the country, and the utter incapacity of the
+men in office to deal with such a crisis, and inwardly chafing against
+every extension of the subject which prolonged the seemingly endless
+discourse.
+
+‘A little walk!’ and why, and where, and with whom? Vainly did Edgar’s
+strained gaze explore the distant landscape. From his position at the
+dinner-table, he could see a fine range of country ten or fifteen miles
+away; but never a glimpse of terrace or garden by which Daphne must go.
+And it was the rule of his life to show Sir Vernon the extremity of
+respect, an almost old-fashioned and Grandisonian reverence. Therefore
+to cut short that prosy discourse was impossible.
+
+The blessed moment of release came at last. Sir Vernon finished his
+claret with a sigh, and left nation and ministry to their fate. Edgar
+hurried to the terrace. Gerald and Madoline were sipping their coffee
+at a little rustic bamboo table, the Maltese Fluff lying luxuriously in
+his mistress’s silken lap.
+
+‘Have you any idea where Daphne has gone?’ Edgar asked despairingly.
+
+‘No, indeed. I saw her stroll down towards the river. Perhaps she has
+gone to see her aunt.’
+
+‘Thanks, yes, I daresay,’ replied Edgar, speeding off towards the
+Rectory without waiting to consider whether the clue were worth
+following.
+
+While Mr. Turchill was hastening across the fields at a racing pace,
+Daphne was seated in her boat, quietly drifting towards Stratford,
+along a dreamy twilit river, where every willow had a ghostly look in
+the evening dimness.
+
+She was full of grave thoughts on this her last night in Warwickshire.
+It was more than a year—a year and a quarter—since she had come home
+for good, as the phrase goes, and a year and a quarter makes a large
+section of a young life. The years are so long in early youth, when the
+heart and mind live so fast, and every day is a history: so strangely
+different from the monotonous years of middle age, which glide past
+unawares, like the level flats seen from a canal-boat, each meadow so
+like the last that the voyager is unconscious of progress, till he
+feels the salt breath of Death’s ocean creeping across the low marshes
+of declining life, and knows that his journey is nearly done.
+
+To Daphne that year at South Hill had been a lifetime. How ardently she
+had felt and thought and suffered within the time; what resolutions
+made and broken; what fevers of dangerous delight, and dull intervals
+of remorse; what wild wicked hopes; what black despair! Looking back
+at the time that was gone and dead, she was inclined to exaggerate its
+joys, to gloss over its pain.
+
+‘At the worst I have been happy with him,’ she said, remembering how
+much of that vanished time had been spent in Gerald Goring’s society,
+‘though he is nothing to me, and never can be anything to me but a man
+to be shunned; yet we have been happy together, and that is something.’
+
+She remembered some lines of Dryden’s which Gerald had quoted in her
+presence:
+
+    ‘To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.
+     Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,
+     The joys I have possessed, in spite of Fate, are mine.’
+
+She had lived her day. There had been moments in the past; moments
+that had stirred the deeps of her soul with a power as mysterious as
+the sweep of the angelic wing on Bethesda’s pool; moments when she had
+fancied herself beloved by him, whom to love was treason. These stood
+out upon the page of memory in fiery characters, and in their supernal
+light all the rest of the record seemed dull and dark. There had been
+hours of unquestioning bliss when she had in no wise reasoned upon
+her happiness, when she had not asked herself whether she was loved
+or scorned, but had been happy as the summer insects are among the
+flowers, vivified by the sunshine, asking nothing but to live and enjoy
+that glorious warmth and brightness. So at times she had abandoned
+herself to the delight of his society, whom she had loved from the hour
+of their first meeting, giving all her heart and mind to him at once,
+as utterly as Juliet gave hers to Romeo.
+
+She had lived her day. The long vista of to-morrow and to-morrow opened
+before her joyless gaze, and she could look down the tranquil path it
+was her fate to tread, a wife beloved and honoured, a sister fondly
+loved, a daughter reconciled with her father, mistress of a fine old
+house, full of quaint and pleasant associations, established for life
+in the heart of rural scenes which her soul loved. Surely it was not a
+destiny to be contemplated with such profound sadness as shadowed her
+face to-night, while she leant listlessly on her oars and drifted down
+the full dark river.
+
+All was very quiet below the bridge when she landed at the
+boat-builder’s yard, and left her craft in charge of that amphibious
+and more than half-intoxicated hanger-on who is generally to be found
+waiting on fortune at every landing-stage. The walk to the church was
+dark and shadowy; lights twinkling in the low cottage windows; glimpses
+of home-life dimly seen through open doors. Daphne walked quickly to
+the avenue of limes, that green odorous aisle that leads to the porch.
+There had been evening service, and the lights were still burning
+here and there, and the heavy old door stood ajar. Daphne pushed it
+gently open, and crept into the church, past the stately monuments of
+mediæval Cloptons, whose marble effigies reposed in solemn pomp upon
+sculptured tombs, rich in armorial emblazonment. In the faint light and
+mysterious shadow the stony figures looked like real sleepers, waiting
+for the last dread summons. Daphne stole past them with noiseless
+footfall, and crept along the aisle to the lovely old chancel, where,
+just within the altar-rails, William Shakespeare takes his last earthly
+rest. The sexton came out of the vestry to see whose footfall it was
+that fell so lightly on that everlasting flint. Daphne was standing by
+the altar-rail in a reverie, looking up at the calm sculptured face,
+so serene in its contentment with a life which, in the vast range and
+dominion of a mind that was in itself a kingdom, had held all things
+worth having. These are the full and rounded lives, complete and
+perfect in themselves, the calm and placid lives of contemplative men,
+for whom the gates of the spiritual universe stand ever open, who are
+in no wise dependent upon the joys, and gains, and triumphs of this
+work-a-day world.
+
+‘Were you always happy, my calm-faced Shakespeare?’ wondered Daphne.
+‘Could you have sounded all the deeps of sorrow without having yourself
+suffered? I think not. Yet there seems hardly any room in your life for
+great sorrow, except perhaps in the loss of that child who died young.
+Was Ann Hathaway your only love, I wonder—you who wrote so sweetly of
+sorrowful hopeless love—or was there another, another whom we know as
+Juliet, and Imogen, and Cordelia: another from whom you always lived
+far apart, yet whom you always loved?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said the sexton; ‘I’m going to lock up the
+church.’
+
+‘Let me stay a few minutes longer,’ pleaded Daphne, taking out her
+purse. ‘I am going away from England to-morrow, and I have come to say
+good-bye to the dear old church.’
+
+‘Are you going to be away long, miss?’
+
+‘Nearly three months.’
+
+‘That’s a very short time,’ said the old man, pocketing Daphne’s
+half-crown. ‘I thought perhaps you were going away for many years—going
+to settle somewhere across the sea. It hardly seems like saying
+good-bye to the church if you are to be back among us this side
+Michaelmas.’
+
+‘No,’ said Daphne dreamily, looking along the shadowy nave, where
+broken rays of moonlight from the painted windows shone upon the dark
+oak benches like dropped jewels. ‘It is not long; but one never knows.
+To-night I feel as if it were going to be for ever. I am so fond of
+this old church.’
+
+‘No wonder, miss. It’s a beautiful church. You should hear the
+Americans admire it. I suppose they’ve nothing half as good in their
+country.’
+
+The moon was up when Daphne left the church, and walked round by
+head-stones and memorial-crosses to the shaded path beside the river,
+where here and there a seat on the low wall invited the weary to repose
+in the cool shade of ancient elms. The broad full river looked calm and
+bright under the moonlit sky; the murmur of the weir sounded like a
+lullaby.
+
+Daphne walked slowly to the end of the path, and stood for a long time
+looking down at the river. She felt curiously loth to leave the spot.
+Yet it was time she were on her homeward way. They would miss her,
+perhaps, and be perplexed, and even anxious about her. But in the next
+moment she dismissed the idea of any such anxiety on her behalf.
+
+‘Lina will not think about me while Mr. Goring is with her; and my
+father is not likely to trouble himself. There is only poor Edgar, and
+he will guess which way I have come, and follow me if he takes it into
+his head to be uneasy.’
+
+Reassured by this idea, Daphne resolved to gratify her fancy for
+farewells to the uttermost, and to say good-bye to the house where the
+poet was born. Stratford streets were very empty and quiet at this
+period of the summer evening, and she met only a few people between
+the churchyard and the sacred dwelling. To a stranger, entrance into
+the sanctuary at such an hour would have been out of the question; but
+Daphne was on friendly terms with the lady custodians of the temple,
+and knew she could coax them to unlock the door for her pleasure. Never
+lamp or candle was admitted within the precincts, but on such a night
+as this there would be no need for artificial light; and Daphne only
+wanted to creep into the quaint old rooms, to look round her quietly
+for a minute or two, and feel the spirit of the place breathing poetry
+into her soul.
+
+‘I have such a strange fancy that I may never see these things again,’
+she said to herself as she stood in the moonlit garden, where only such
+flowers grew as were known in Shakespeare’s time.
+
+The two ladies lived in a snug little house with a strictly Elizabethan
+front, and casement windows that looked into the poet’s garden. All
+that taste, and research, and an ardent love could do had been done to
+make Shakespeare’s house and its surroundings exactly what they were
+when Shakespeare lived. The wise men of Stratford had brought their
+offerings, in the shape of old pictures, and manuscripts, and relics
+of all kinds; the rooms had been restored to their original form and
+semblance; and pilgrims from afar had no longer need to blush for the
+nation which owned such a poet and held his memorials so lightly. A
+very different state of things from the vulgar neglect which obtained
+when Washington Irving visited Stratford.
+
+The maiden warders of the house were a little surprised at so late a
+visit, but received Daphne kindly all the same, and were disposed to be
+indulgent to girlish enthusiasm in so worthy a cause. It was against
+the rules to open the house at so late an hour; but as no light was
+needed, Daphne should be allowed just to creep in, and bid good-bye to
+the hearth beside which Shakespeare had played at his mother’s knees.
+
+‘One would think you were going away for a long while, Miss Lawford,’
+said one of the ladies, smiling at Daphne’s eager face.
+
+It was exactly what the sexton had said, and Daphne made the same
+answer as she had given him.
+
+‘One never knows,’ she said.
+
+‘Ah, but we know. You are coming home to be married in the autumn. We
+have heard all about it. Stratford Bells will ring a merry peal on that
+day, I should think; though I suppose the wedding will be at Arden
+Church. I am so glad you are going to settle in the neighbourhood, like
+your sister. What a grand place Goring Abbey is, to be sure! My sister
+and I drove over in a fly last summer to look at it. We went all over
+the house and grounds. It is a beautiful place. Yet I don’t know but
+that I like Mr. Turchill’s old manor-house best.’
+
+‘So do I,’ answered Daphne absently.
+
+‘Of course you do!’ cried the other sister, laughing. ‘That’s only
+natural.’
+
+They all three went across the garden in the moonlight, and the elder
+sister unlocked the house-door.
+
+‘Would you like go in alone?’ she asked. ‘You are not afraid of
+ghosts?’
+
+‘Of Shakespeare’s ghost? No, I should dearly love to see him. I would
+fall on my knees and worship the beautiful spirit.’
+
+‘Go in, then. We’ll wait in the garden.’
+
+Daphne went softly into the empty house. It was more ghostly than the
+church—more uncanny in its emptiness. She felt as if the disembodied
+souls of the dead were verily around and about her. That empty hearth,
+on which the moonbeams shone so coldly; those dusky walls; a vacant
+chair or two; a gleam of coloured light from an old scrap of stained
+glass. How cold it all felt in its dismal loneliness. She tried to
+conjure up a vision of the poet’s home three hundred years ago—in its
+old-world simplicity, its homely comfort and repose; a world before
+steam-engines, gas, and electricity; a world in which printing and
+gunpowder were almost new. To think of it was like going back to the
+childhood of this earth.
+
+Daphne left the outer door ajar, and crept softly through the rooms,
+half expectant of ghostly company. What tricks moonbeam and shadow
+played upon the walls, upon the solid old timber crossbeams, where in
+the unregenerate days, a quarter of a century ago, pilgrims used to
+pencil their miserable names upon the wood or whitewash, childishly
+fancying they were securing to themselves a kind of immortality.
+Daphne stood by the window with her heart beating feverishly, and her
+ear strained to catch the footfall of the sisters in the garden, and
+thus to be sure of human company. She looked along the empty street,
+moonlighted, peaceful; even the tavern over the way a place of seeming
+tranquillity, notable only by its glimmering window and red curtain.
+The silence and shadowiness of the house were beginning to frighten her
+in spite of her better reason, when a step came behind her—a firm light
+tread which her ear and heart knew too well. It seemed almost as if her
+heart stopped beating at the sound of that footfall. She stood like a
+thing of marble, scarce breathing. The step had crossed the threshold
+of the outer room, and was drawing nearer, when an eager voice outside
+broke the spell:
+
+‘Is she there? Have you found her?’
+
+It was Edgar’s voice at the outer door.
+
+‘Yes. Where else should she be?’ answered Gerald Goring.
+
+‘Well, my lady, I hope you are satisfied with the nice little dance you
+have led us,’ he said to Daphne as coolly as if he had been talking to
+a refractory child.
+
+‘You need not have troubled yourself about me,’ she answered curtly. ‘I
+told Lina I was coming for a walk. How did Edgar know I was here?’
+
+‘Edgar knew nothing,’ answered Gerald, with a light laugh that was
+something too scornful for perfect friendship. ‘Edgar would as soon
+have looked for you at Guy’s Cliff or Warwick Castle, or in the moon.
+I knew you were nothing if not Shakespearian; and when I heard you had
+taken your boat I guessed you had gone to worship at your favourite
+shrine. We heard of you at the church, and hunted for you among the
+trees and tombs.’
+
+‘And then we went back to the landing-stage, where you always stop,
+don’t you know, when you go as far as Stratford, and finding you had
+not come back for your boat, I was almost in despair. But Gerald
+suggested Shakespeare’s birthplace, and here we are.’
+
+It was Gerald, then, who had found her; it was Gerald whose quick
+sympathy, prompt to divine her thoughts, had told him where she would
+be. Her future husband, the man to whom she was bound, had guessed
+nothing, had no faculty for understanding her fancies, whims, and
+follies. How wide apart must she and he remain all their lives, though
+nominally one!
+
+They all three went quietly back to the garden, where the sisters were
+waiting, amused at Daphne’s folly, and thinking it quite the most
+charming thing in girlhood; for to these vestals Shakespeare was a
+religion.
+
+‘I am really very sorry to have caused you so much trouble,’ said
+Daphne, apologising in a general way; ‘but I had no idea my absence
+would give anyone concern. Perhaps I have been longer than I intended
+to be.’
+
+‘It struck ten a quarter of an hour ago,’ said Edgar.
+
+‘That’s really dreadful; I had no idea it was so late.’
+
+Daphne bade the sisters good-bye, apologising humbly for her nocturnal
+visit. They went to the garden-gate with her, and stood there watching
+the light slim figure till it vanished in the moonlight, full of
+interest in her prettiness and her fancies.
+
+‘Is it not a sweet face?’ asked one.
+
+‘And was it not a sweet idea to come and bid good-bye to this house
+before she went abroad?’ said the other.
+
+Daphne and her companions walked down to the landing-stage, talking
+very little by the way. Edgar and his betrothed side by side, Gerald
+walking apart with a cigar.
+
+Daphne wanted to row, but Edgar insisted on establishing her in the
+stern, wrapped in a shawl which he found in the boat. He took the
+sculls, and Gerald reclined in the bows, smoking and looking up at the
+night sky.
+
+It was a lovely night, all the landscape sublimated by that glory of
+moonbeam and shadow into something better and more beautiful than
+its daylight simplicity; every little creek and curve of the river a
+glimpse of fairyland; all things so radiantly and mysteriously lovely
+that Daphne almost hoped to see the river-god and his attendant nymphs
+disporting themselves in some reedy shallow.
+
+‘On such a night as this one would expect to see the old Greek gods
+come back to earth. I can’t help feeling sorry sometimes, like Alfred
+de Musset, that they are all dead and gone,’ she said, looking with
+dreamy eyes down the moonlit tide across which the shadows of the
+willows fell so darkly.
+
+‘I think, considering the general tenor of their conduct, every
+proper-minded young lady ought to feel very glad we have got rid of
+them,’ said Gerald, throwing away the end of his cigar, which fizzed
+and sparkled and made a little red spot in the moonlit water, a light
+that was of the earth earthy amidst all that heavenly radiance. ‘How
+would you like to be run away with by a wicked old man disguised as a
+bull; or to have the earth open as you were gathering daffodils, and a
+still wickeder old gentleman leap out of his chariot to carry you off
+to Tartarus?’
+
+‘How dare you call Zeus old?’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘The gods were
+for ever young.’
+
+‘Well, he was a family man at any rate, and ought to have known better
+than to go masquerading about the plains and valleys when he ought to
+have been sitting in state on Olympus,’ answered Gerald. ‘Now such a
+river on such a night as this puts me in mind of old German legends
+rather than of Greek gods and goddesses. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised
+if Miss Daphne Lawford were suddenly to develop into an Undine, and
+take a header into the river, cleaving the silvery tide, and going
+down to depths beyond any earthly fathom-line, leaving Turchill and me
+aghast in the boat.’
+
+‘I have often envied Undine,’ answered Daphne; ‘I love the river so
+dearly that years ago I used really to fancy that there must be a
+bright world underneath it, where there are gnomes and fairies, and
+where one might be happy for ever. Even now, though I have left off
+believing in fairies, I cannot help thinking that there is profound
+peace at the bottom of this quiet river.’
+
+‘If you were to go down experimentally in a diving-bell, I’m afraid
+you’d find only profound mud,’ said Gerald, with his cynical laugh.
+
+Since his return from Canada he had treated Daphne much in the old
+fashion—as if she were a child upon whose foolishness his wisdom looked
+down from an ineffable height. There was nothing in manner, word, or
+look to show that he remembered that one fatal moment of self-betrayal,
+when his passionate heart gave up its secret.
+
+‘I wonder what Daphne will think of this turbid Avon after she has seen
+Lake Leman,’ he speculated presently, ‘eh, Turchill?’
+
+‘The lake is a great deal wider,’ said Edgar, with his matter-of-fact
+air; ‘and those capital steamers are a great attraction.’
+
+‘A lake with steamers upon it! Too horrible!’ cried Daphne. ‘I shall
+not like it half so well as my romantic Avon, though its waters are
+sometimes “drumly.” Dear old Avon!’—they were at the boat-house by this
+time, and she was stepping on shore as she spoke—‘how long before I
+shall see you again?’
+
+‘Less than three months,’ said Edgar, clasping her hand as she sprang
+up the steps which Bink had cut in the meadow bank. ‘Not quite three
+months; and then, darling,’ in a lower tone, ‘you will be all my own,
+and I shall be the happiest man on earth.’
+
+‘Who knows?’ returned Daphne. ‘How can one be sure when one is leaving
+a place that one will ever come back to it? Good-bye, dear old river!’
+she cried, turning to look back at it with eyes full of tears. ‘I feel
+as sad as if I were taking my last look at you.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+‘BUT I WOT BEST WHER WRINGETH ME MY SHO.’
+
+
+Twenty-four hours after that quiet row up the moonlit river, the South
+Hill party were on the Calais steamer, tossing and tumbling about in
+the Channel, much to the discomfiture of Mrs. Mowser, who was a bad
+sailor, and took care to make everybody in the ladies’ cabin perfectly
+familiar with that fact. There was nothing of the Spartan about
+Mowser, nothing in any wise heroic in her conduct under the trial of
+sea-sickness. Yet there was a kind of martyrlike fidelity in her; for
+even in her agony she never let her mistress’s travelling-bag and
+jewel-box out of her eye—nay, would hardly trust those valuables out
+of her own grasp, clutching at them convulsively in the throes of her
+malady, and suspecting evil intentions in guileless fellow-sufferers.
+
+It was a lovely night, and Madoline and Daphne both stayed on deck, to
+the indignation of Mowser, who was sure Miss Lawford would catch cold,
+and declared it was all Miss Daphne’s doing.
+
+‘I thought you’d have come down to the cabin and had a comfortable
+lay-down,’ said Mowser when they had all scrambled or staggered up the
+oozy steps, and had been interrogated as to their names by an alert
+official, in a manner somewhat alarming to the sleepy and feeble-minded
+voyager.
+
+Then came a weary hour or so in the warm light refreshment-room, a
+cup of coffee, or a _bouillon_, a few stifled yawns, an occasional
+excursion to the platform, and finally the welcome departure, by flat
+fields and unknown marsh-lands, with the inevitable row of poplars
+against the horizon. Daphne seemed to know the depressing landscape by
+heart. Her father, muffled in his corner, slept peacefully. Madoline
+slumbered, or seemed to slumber. Gerald and Edgar had secured a _coupé_
+to smoke in; and by a judicious arrangement with the guard Sir Vernon
+and his daughters had a compartment all to themselves. But not one wink
+of sleep visited Daphne’s eyelids. Wearily she watched the monotonous
+landscape, enlivened a little now and then by a glimpse of village
+life in the clear cold light of early morning; cattle moving about
+in misty meadows, casements opening to the balmy air. What a long
+journey it seemed to that one wakeful passenger! but the longest—were
+it even a long unprofitable, uneventful life-journey—must end at last;
+and by-and-by there came the cry of ‘Paris!’ and the mandate that
+all passengers were to pass into the great bare luggage repository
+to answer for the contents of bags and baggage; a weary interval,
+during which the South Hill party loitered in bleak waiting-rooms,
+while Jinman and Mrs. Mowser delivered up keys, and satisfied the
+requirements of the State.
+
+A long day in Paris, during which Sir Vernon reposed from his fatigues
+at the Bristol Hotel, while the young people went about sight-seeing;
+a dinner at Bignon’s, where Daphne protested she could perceive no
+difference between the much-vaunted _consommé_ of that establishment
+and Mrs. Spicer’s clear soup; an evening at the Français, where they
+saw Got in Mercadet; and then off again in the early summer morning by
+the eight o’clock train for Dijon and Geneva, a twelve hours’ journey.
+
+It was a peerless morning. Paris, with its busy markets and
+teeming life, seemed brimming over with brightness and gaiety;
+boulevard-building in full progress; waggons coming in from the
+country; artisans hurrying, grisettes tripping to their work. Daphne’s
+spirits rose with the thought of fresh woods and pastures new.
+
+‘I have been longing all my life to see Switzerland,’ she said, when
+all the difficulties of departure were overcome, and the train was
+speeding gaily past suburban gardens, and groves, and bridges, ‘and now
+I can hardly believe I am going there. It is a journey to dream about
+and look forward to, not to come to pass.’
+
+‘Are no bright things ever to come to pass? Is all life to be dull
+and colourless?’ asked Gerald Goring, sitting opposite her in the
+railway-carriage, with Lina by his side. They were all together to-day,
+having established themselves as comfortably as possible in the
+spacious compartment, and having provided themselves largely with light
+literature, wherewith to beguile the tedium of the journey.
+
+‘I don’t know about you,’ said Daphne; ‘you are an exceptional person,
+and have been able to realise all your dreams!’
+
+‘Not all,’ answered Gerald gravely: ‘I suppose no one ever does that.’
+
+‘You have but to form a wish, and, lo! it is gratified,’ murmured
+Daphne, taking no notice of his interruption. ‘Last winter it flashed
+across your brain that it would be nice to shoot cariboos—poor innocent
+harmless cariboos, who had never injured you—and, in a thought, you are
+off and away by seas and rivers and snow and ice to gratify the whim.
+What pleasure can Switzerland have for you? Every inch of it must be as
+vapidly familiar as that dear old English Warwickshire which you esteem
+so lightly.’
+
+‘Perhaps; but it is a pleasure to revisit a familiar place with those I
+love. I was a poor solitary waif when I went through Switzerland, from
+Geneva to Constance, from Lindau to Samaden, picking up my companions
+by the way, or travelling in Byronic solitude—though, by the way, I
+doubt if Byron ever was much alone. Judged by his poetry, he may be a
+gloomy and solitary spirit; but judged by his life and letters, he was
+a social soul.’
+
+‘I like to think of him as gloomy and alone,’ said Daphne, with a
+determined air. ‘Please don’t dispel all my illusions.’
+
+Edgar was sitting by her side, cutting up magazines and newspapers,
+watchful of her every look, thinking her every word delightful, ready
+to minister to her comfort or pleasure, but without much ability to
+entertain her with any conversational brightness—unless they two
+could have been alone, and could have talked of their future life at
+Hawksyard; the stables, the gardens, the horses they were to ride
+together next winter, when Daphne was to take the field, a heaven-born
+Diana. He was never tired of talking of that happy future, so near, so
+near, and to which he looked forward with such fervent hope.
+
+They were nearing Fontainebleau; already the forest showed dark on the
+horizon. Daphne, so vivacious hitherto, became curiously silent. She
+sat looking towards that distant line of wood, that smiling valley
+with its winding river. All her soul was in her eyes as she looked.
+Two years ago—almost day for day, two years—and her heart had awakened
+suddenly from its long sleep of childish innocence to feel and to
+suffer.
+
+Gerald stole a look—guiltily as it were—at the too expressive face.
+Yes, she remembered. Her soul was full of sad and tender memories. He
+could read all her secrets in those lovely eyes, the lips slightly
+parted, the lace about her neck stirred faintly by the throbbing of her
+heart. She had no more forgotten Fontainebleau and their meetings there
+than he had. To each it dated a crisis in life: for each it had given a
+new colour to every thought and feeling.
+
+Lina, her hands moving slowly in some easy knitting, looked up at her
+sister.
+
+‘Are we not near Fontainebleau, where you spent your holidays once?’
+she asked.
+
+‘Yes,’ Daphne answered shortly.
+
+‘You speak as if you had not been happy there.’
+
+‘I liked the place very much; but it was a dull life. Poor Miss Toby
+and her sick headaches, and Dibb for my only companion.’
+
+‘And Dibb was ineffably stupid,’ said Gerald, suddenly forgetting
+himself, and moved to laughter at the thought of honest Martha’s
+stolidity; ‘at least, I have often heard you say as much,’ he added
+hastily.
+
+‘She was a good harmless thing, and I won’t have her ridiculed,’
+said Daphne, brightening, all serious thoughts taking flight at the
+absurdity of Gerald’s lapse. ‘I wonder if she has finished that crochet
+counterpane.’
+
+‘Finished it! Of course not,’ cried Gerald. ‘She is the sort of girl
+who would die, and come to life again in a better world still working
+at the same counterpane—as I imagine from your description of her,’ he
+concluded meekly.
+
+They were leaving Fontainebleau far behind them by this time; its old
+church, and its palace, with all its historic memories of Francis and
+Henri, Napoleon and Pius VII. The forest was but a dark spot in the
+vanishing distance; they were speeding away to the rich wine country
+with its vast green plains, and steep hillsides clothed with vines. At
+two o’clock they were at Dijon, and seemed to have been travelling a
+week. Sir Vernon grumbled at the dust and heat, and regretted that he
+had undertaken the whole journey in a day.
+
+‘We ought to have stayed the night at Dijon,’ he said fretfully, when
+they were out of the station, steaming away towards Macon, after a
+hurried luncheon in the well-furnished refreshment-room.
+
+‘It is a wretchedly dull place to stop at, sir,’ said Gerald; ‘hardly
+anything to see.’
+
+‘At my age a man does not want always to be seeing things,’ growled Sir
+Vernon; ‘he wants rest.’
+
+The day had been oppressively hot—a sultry heat, a sunbaked landscape.
+Madoline and her sister bore it with admirable patience, beguiling the
+tedium of those long hours now with conversation, now with books, anon
+with quiet contemplation of the landscape, which for a long way offered
+no striking features. It was growing towards evening when they entered
+the Jura region, and found themselves in a world that was really worth
+looking at: a wild strange world, as it appeared to Daphne’s eye; vast
+rolling masses of hill that seemed to have been thrown up in long waves
+before this little world assumed shape and solidity; precipitous green
+slopes, grassy walls that shut out the day, and the deep rapid river
+cleaving its tumultuous course through the trough of the hills.
+
+‘Don’t you think this is better than Stratford-upon-Avon?’ asked Gerald
+mockingly, as he watched Daphne’s excited face, her eyes wide with
+wonder.
+
+‘Ever so much wilder and grander. I should like to live here.’
+
+‘Why?’
+
+‘Because in such a world one would forget oneself. One’s own poor
+little troubles would seem too mean and trumpery to be thought about.’
+
+‘No man’s trouble is small or mean to the sufferer himself,’ replied
+Gerald. ‘There is nothing grand or dignified in the abstract notion of
+Job’s boils; yet to him they meant an unendurable agony which tempted
+him to curse his Creator and destroy his own life. I don’t believe the
+grandest natural surroundings would lessen one’s sense of the thorn in
+one’s side.’
+
+‘I don’t think you have any thorns, Daphne,’ said Edgar tenderly,
+‘or that you need take refuge from your sorrows among these
+desolate-looking mountains.’
+
+‘Of course not. I was only speaking generally,’ answered Daphne
+lightly; ‘but oh! what a mighty world it is—hills that climb to the
+sky, and such lovely tranquil valleys lying between those dark earth
+walls. Vines, and water-mills, and waterfalls tumbling over rocky beds.
+If Switzerland is much grander than this, I think its grandeur will
+kill me. I can hardly breathe when I look up at those great dark hills.’
+
+‘I don’t know that there is anything in Switzerland that impresses one
+so much as one’s first view of the Jura,’ said Gerald. ‘It is the giant
+gateway of mountain-land—the entrance into a new world.’
+
+The heat seemed to increase rather than diminish with the shades of
+evening. No cool breeze sprang up with the going down of the sun. The
+sultry atmosphere thickened, and became almost stifling; and then, just
+as it was growing dark, big raindrops came splashing down, a roar of
+thunder rolled along the hills, like a volley of cannon; thin threads
+of vivid light trembled and zigzagged behind the hill-tops, and the
+storm which had been brooding over them all the afternoon broke in real
+earnest.
+
+‘A thunderstorm in the Jura,’ exclaimed Gerald; ‘what a lucky young
+woman you are, Mistress Daphne! Here is one of Nature’s grandest
+effects got up as if on purpose to give you pleasure.’
+
+‘I hope it may cool the air,’ said Sir Vernon, from the comfortable
+corner where he had been fitfully slumbering ever since they left the
+French territory.
+
+Daphne sat looking out of the window, and spoke never a word. She
+was drinking in the beauty and grandeur of this unspeakable region,
+trying to fill her soul with the form and manner of it. Yes, it was
+worth while living, were it only to see these mountain peaks and
+gorges; these hurrying waters and leaping torrents; these living forces
+of everlasting Nature. She had been weary of her life very often of
+late, so weary that she would gladly have flung it off her like a
+worn-out garment, and have lain down in dull contentment to take her
+last earthly rest; but to-night she was glad to be alive—to see the
+forked lightnings dancing upon the mountain-sides; to hear all earth
+shudder at the roar of the thunder; to feel herself a part of that
+grand conflict. A little later, when they had gone through an almost
+endless tunnel, and were nearing Geneva, the thunder grew more and more
+distant, seemed to travel slowly away, like an enemy’s cannon firing
+stray shots as the foe retreated; and the night sky flung off its black
+cloud-mantle, and all the stars shone out of a calm purple heaven;
+while the little lights of the city, faint yellow spots upon the dark
+blue night, trembled and quivered in the distance.
+
+‘Isn’t this dreadfully like one’s idea of Manchester?’ said Daphne,
+when they were in the station, and tickets were being collected in the
+usual businesslike way.
+
+‘Can there be a higher model than Manchester for any commercial city?’
+asked Gerald.
+
+‘Commercial! Oh, I hope there is nothing commercial in Switzerland. I
+have always thought of it as a land of mountains and lakes.’
+
+‘So is Scotland, yet there is such an element as trade in that country.’
+
+‘You are bent on destroying my illusions. Oh, what a horrid row
+of omnibuses!’ cried Daphne, as they came out of the station and
+confronted about twenty of those vehicles, with doors hospitably open,
+and commissionaires eager to abduct new arrivals for their several
+hotels. ‘And where is Mont Blanc?’ she inquired, looking up at the
+surrounding chimney-pots.
+
+‘At your elbow,’ answered Gerald; ‘but you may not see him to-night.
+The monarch of mountains is like our own gracious sovereign, and is not
+always visible to his subjects.’
+
+There was a private carriage from the Beau Rivage Hotel waiting for the
+South Hill party, and in this they all drove down a hilly-street, which
+was bright and clean, and wide, and prosperous-looking, but cruelly
+disappointing to Daphne. Jinman and Mowser followed in the omnibus with
+the luggage. Mowser, like Daphne, was considerably disappointed.
+
+‘If this is Switzerland, I call it very inferior to Brighton,’ she said
+snappishly. ‘Where are the glaziers and the mountings?’
+
+‘Did you expect to find them just outside the station?’ demanded the
+more travelled Jinman. ‘I have lived months in Switzerland and never
+seen a glashyeer. I don’t hold with having one’s bones rattled to bits
+upon a mule for the sake of seeing a lot of dirty ice. One can look at
+that any hard winter on the Serpentine.’
+
+‘Swisserland is Swisserland,’ answered Mowser sententiously, ‘and I
+don’t hold with travelling all this way from home—I’m sure I thought
+this blessed day would never come to an end—unless we are to see
+somethink out of the common.’
+
+‘The hotels are first-class,’ said Jinman, ‘and so are the restorongs
+on board the boats. Nobody need starve in Switzerland.’
+
+‘Can we get a decent cup of tea?’ asked Mowser. ‘There’s not a
+scullery-maid at South Hill as would drink such cat-lap as they brought
+me at the Bristol.’
+
+Jinman explained that the teapot was an institution fully understood in
+the Helvetian States.
+
+‘They’re a more domestic people than the French,’ said Jinman
+condescendingly, ‘I must say that for them. But Genever is the poorest
+place for restorongs I was ever at; plenty of your caffy-staminies,
+where you may drink bad wine and smoke bad cigars to your heart’s
+content; but hardly a decent house where you can get a dejoonay à la
+fourchette, or give a little bit of dinner to a friend. The hotels have
+got it all their own way.’
+
+‘They ought to,’ answered Mowser, ‘when there’s such a many of ’em. I
+wonder they can all pay.’
+
+At the Beau Rivage, Sir Vernon and his daughters found a spacious
+suite of rooms on the third floor, many-windowed, balconied, looking
+over the lake. The two young men had secured quarters a little way off
+at the International. Sir Vernon grumbled at being put on the third
+storey, after having given due notice of his coming; but the American
+dollar and the Russian rouble had bought up the first and second stages
+of the big hotel, and an English country gentleman must needs be
+contented with an upper floor. But the rooms were lovely, and Daphne
+was delighted with their altitude.
+
+‘We are all the nearer Mont Blanc,’ she said, standing half in and half
+out of the window; ‘one of the waiters told me it was over there—_tout
+près_—but though I have been straining my eyes ever since, I can’t
+discover a gleam of snow behind those dark hills.’
+
+There were the loveliest flowers on the tables and cabinets, such
+flowers as one hardly expects to find at an hotel, were it never so
+luxurious. Madoline admired them wonderingly.
+
+‘One would think the people here knew my particular vanity, and were
+anxious to gratify me,’ she said; and then turning to one of the
+waiters who was arranging books and writing-desks on the tables, she
+asked: ‘Have you always such lovely flowers in the rooms?’
+
+‘No, madame. They were ordered this morning by a telegram from Paris.’
+
+‘Father! No, Gerald; it must have been your doing.’
+
+‘A happy thought while I was loitering about that miserable
+railway-station,’ replied Gerald.
+
+‘How good of you! Dear flowers. They make the place seem like home.’
+
+‘When you are settled at Montreux we can arrange for the contents of
+the Abbey hot-houses to be sent you weekly. It will be something for
+that pampered menial MacCloskie to look after, in the intervals of his
+cigars and metaphysical studies. I have an idea that he employs all his
+leisure in reading Dugald Stewart. There is a hardness about him which
+I can only attribute to a close study of abstract truth.’
+
+Daphne was standing out in the balcony, with Edgar at her side, looking
+down at the scene below. Geneva seemed pretty enough in this night
+view—a city of lake and lamplight, ringed round with mountains; a city
+of angles and bridges, sharp lines, lofty houses, peaked roofs; the
+dark bulk of a cathedral, with, a picturesque lantern on the roof,
+dominating all the rest.
+
+‘I think if it would only lighten I could see Mont Blanc,’ said Daphne,
+with her eyes fixed upon that bit of sky to which the waiter had
+pointed when she questioned him about the mountain. ‘One good vivid
+flash would light it up beautifully.’
+
+‘My dearest, how dangerous!’ exclaimed Edgar; ‘pray, come out of the
+balcony. You might be blinded.’
+
+‘I’ll risk that. It will not be the first time I have stared the
+lightning out of countenance.’
+
+A summer flash lit up the sky as she spoke. There was one wide quiver
+of pale blue light, but never a glimpse of snow-clad peak gleamed from
+the distance.
+
+‘How horrid!’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘but that was a very poor flash. I’ll
+wait for a better one.’
+
+She waited for half-a-dozen, in spite of Edgar’s urgent efforts to lure
+her indoors, but the summer flashes showed her nothing but their own
+vivid light.
+
+‘If the electric light prove no better than that for all practical
+uses, I don’t envy the inventor,’ she exclaimed with infinite disgust.
+
+Dinner was served in the adjoining room, but Madoline and her sister
+begged to be excused from dining. They would take tea together in the
+drawing-room while the three gentlemen dined. Sir Vernon declared that
+he had no appetite, but he was willing to sit down, for the public good
+as it were. After which protest he did ample justice to a _sole à la
+Normande_, and a _poulet à la Marengo_, to say nothing of such pretty
+tiny kickshaws as _gâteau St. Honoré_ and ice-pudding.
+
+For Madeline and Daphne a round table was spread with a snowy cloth,
+a pile of delicious rolls, unquestionable butter, and a glass dish of
+pale golden honey, excellent tea, and cream—a thoroughly Arcadian meal.
+
+‘Dearest, how brightly your eyes are sparkling,’ said Lina, with an
+admiring look at the young face opposite. ‘I can see you are enjoying
+yourself.’
+
+‘Yes, there is always a pleasure in novelty. Why cannot one pass all
+one’s life in new places? The world is wide enough. It is only our own
+foolishness that keeps us tied, like a poor tethered animal, to one
+dull spot.’
+
+‘Why, Daphne, I thought you were so fond of home, that the banks of the
+Warwickshire Avon made up your idea of earthly paradise!’
+
+‘Sometimes, yes. But lately I have grown terribly tired of
+Warwickshire.’
+
+‘That’s a bad hearing; and next year, when you are settled at
+Hawksyard——’
+
+‘Please don’t speak of that. Thank Heaven we are three days’ journey
+from Hawksyard. Let me forget it if I can.’
+
+‘Daphne, how can you talk like that of a dear old place which is to be
+your home—a place where one of the best men living was born?’
+
+‘If you think him such a wonder of goodness, why did you not have
+him when he asked you?’ cried Daphne, in a sudden fit of irritation.
+Those nerves of hers, always too highly strung, were to-night at their
+sharpest tension. ‘I am sick to death of hearing him praised by people
+who don’t care a straw about him.’
+
+‘Daphne!’ exclaimed Lina, more grieved than offended at this outburst.
+
+Daphne was on her knees beside her sister in the next moment.
+
+‘Forgive me, darling, I am hideously cross and disagreeable. I suppose
+it is that tiresome lightning and the annoyance of not seeing Mont
+Blanc. All that long, dusty, fusty journey, and nothing but an hotel
+and a lamp-lit town at the end of it. I wanted to find myself in the
+very heart of mountains, and glaciers, and avalanches.’
+
+‘I think you know how honestly I like Edgar,’ said Madoline, believing
+in her guilelessness that Daphne had resented her praise of Mr.
+Turchill because she fancied it hollow and insincere. ‘I daresay if I
+had not cared for Gerald long before Edgar proposed to me, I might have
+given Mr. Turchill a different answer. I cannot tell how that might
+have been. My life has had only one love. I loved Gerald from the days
+when he first came to South Hill, a school-boy, when he used to tell
+me all his troubles and his triumphs, when any success of his made me
+prouder than if it had been my own. My heart was given away ages before
+Edgar ever spoke to me of love.’
+
+‘I know, dear; I can understand it all; only, don’t you know, when
+everybody conspires to praise the young man to whom one is engaged,
+and when all one’s relations are everlastingly congratulating one
+upon one’s good fortune—the implication being that it is quite
+undeserved—there is a kind of weariness that creeps over one’s soul at
+the sound of those familiar phrases.’
+
+‘I will never praise him again, dear,’ answered Lina, smiling at her.
+‘I shall be perfectly contented to know that you value him as he
+deserves to be valued, and that your future happiness is assured by his
+devoted love.’
+
+Daphne gave a fretful little sigh, but made no further protest. She was
+thinking that she had seen a Newfoundland dog every whit as devoted as
+Edgar. Yet the affection of that Newfoundland would have hardly been
+deemed all-sufficient for the happiness of a lifetime.
+
+She went back to the table, and did execution upon the rolls and honey
+with a healthy girlish appetite, despite that feverish unrest which
+disturbed the equal balance of her mind.
+
+Daphne ordered Edgar to attend her on an exploration of the city next
+morning, directly after breakfast.
+
+‘Madoline and my father know the place by heart,’ she said; ‘and, of
+course, Mr. Goring is tired of it. How could a man who is weary of all
+creation care for Geneva?’
+
+‘Who told you I was weary of creation?’ asked Gerald languidly.
+
+‘Your ways and your manners,’ replied Daphne. ‘I knew as much the first
+time I saw you.’
+
+The weather was clear and bright, the town looking its best, as Daphne
+and her lover left the hotel on their excursion. They were to be back
+before noon, at which hour they were to start with Gerald and Madoline
+for Ferney.
+
+‘If it were not for the lake this place would be beneath contempt,’
+said Daphne decisively, as they crossed the low level bridge, and
+lingered to look at the sapphire Rhone, and to speculate upon that
+deepened azure hue which the waters assume when they flow from the lake
+into the river. ‘It is no more like the Geneva of my dreams than it is
+like Jerusalem the Golden.’
+
+‘Is it not really?’
+
+‘Of course not. My idea of Switzerland was a succession of mountain
+ledges, varied by an occasional plank across a torrent. Imagine
+my revulsion of feeling at finding a big businesslike town, with
+omnibuses, and cafés, and manufactories, and everything that is
+commonplace and despicable.’
+
+‘But, surely, I think you must have known that Geneva was a town,’
+faltered Edgar, grieved at his dear one’s ignorance, and glad to think
+his mother was not by to compare this foolishness with her own precise
+geographical knowledge, acquired thirty years ago at Miss Tompion’s,
+and carefully harvested in the store-house of a methodical mind.
+
+‘Well, perhaps I may have expected something in the way of a city; a
+semi-circle of white peaky houses on the margin of the lake; a mediæval
+watch-tower or two; a Gothic gateway, the very gate that was shut
+against Rousseau, don’t you know; and Mont Blanc in full view.’
+
+‘I call it a very fine town,’ said Edgar, venturing to disagree with
+his beloved.
+
+‘I wish it did not swarm so with English and Americans. I have heard
+nothing but my own tongue since I came out,’ protested Daphne.
+
+She was better pleased presently when they mounted a narrow street on
+the side of a breakneck hill. She was tolerably satisfied with the
+cathedral, where the tomb of the great Protestant leader Henri de Rohan
+took her fancy by its massive grandeur, couchant lions at its base,
+the soldier in his armour above. She was interested in the pulpit from
+which Calvin and Theodore de Bèze preached the Reformed Faith, and was
+somewhat disgusted with her companion for his utter ignorance of the
+historic past, save inasmuch as it was feebly reflected in the most
+limited and conventional course of instruction.
+
+‘What did you learn at Rugby?’ she asked impatiently. ‘You don’t seem
+to know anything.’
+
+‘We didn’t give much time to history, except Livy and Xenophon,’
+answered Edgar, feebly apologetic.
+
+‘And therefore you are not a bit of use as a cicerone. You really ought
+to subscribe to Mudie and read a lot of instructive books. There’s no
+good in reading old histories; people are always discovering letters
+and archives that put the whole story of the past in a new light. You
+must get your history hot from the press.’
+
+‘I would rather take my information at second-hand from you, dear,’
+answered Edgar meekly. ‘It seems natural to women to read a great deal,
+and to find almost a second life in books, but men——’
+
+‘Are so shamefully lazy that their capacity for taking in knowledge is
+exhausted by the time they have skimmed the daily papers,’ answered
+Daphne. ‘And now, please, take me to the museums Mr. Goring told you
+about.’
+
+With some trouble, and a good deal of inquiring, they found a private
+collection of art and _bric-à-brac_, historical relics, furniture,
+delft, and china, that was well worth seeing. Then, having regaled
+their eyes upon this to the uttermost, they scampered off to the
+public museum, where the only objects of thrilling interest were the
+manuscripts and letters of dead and gone celebrities, from Calvin
+downwards. They found that famous reformer’s penmanship as angular as
+his character; they found Bossuet a careless and sprawling writer;
+Fénelon careful, neat, and fine; the Duc de Richelieu a fop even in the
+use of his pen, his writing exquisitely clear, minute, and regular;
+while De Maintenon’s hand was large, bold, angular, and eminently
+readable—the natural indication of an unscrupulous managing temper, a
+woman born to govern, by fair means or foul. Daphne lingered a little
+over Rousseau’s manuscript of ‘Julie,’ a work of delicate neatness,
+evidently copied from the rough draft.
+
+‘Is not “Julie” one of the novels which one mustn’t read?’ asked
+Daphne, when she had perused half a page. ‘It looks uncommonly dull. I
+thought wicked stories were always interesting.’
+
+Edgar had never heard of ‘Julie.’ It was doubtful if he had ever
+heard of Rousseau; but at this remark he hurried Daphne away from the
+manuscript, lest some snaky little bit of immorality should uncurl
+itself on the page, and lift up its evil head before her. It was time
+for them to get back to the hotel, so they gave but a cursory glance at
+the pictures and other treasures of the museum, and hastened into the
+glare of the broad white street, where Edgar insisted upon putting his
+betrothed into a fly. They found Madoline and Gerald waiting for them
+in the porch of the Beau Rivage, and a smart open carriage with a pair
+of horses ready to take them to Ferney.
+
+‘Thank goodness we are going away from Geneva,’ said Daphne, as the
+carriage rattled through the wide clean streets towards the country;
+‘and now I suppose we shall see something really Swiss.’
+
+‘You will see the home of a great man of letters,’ answered Gerald,
+looking at her lazily with those languid dreamy eyes whose shifting hue
+had so puzzled her in the forest of Fontainebleau, ‘and as you are such
+a hero-worshipper, that ought to satisfy you.’
+
+‘I don’t care a straw for Voltaire,’ said Daphne.
+
+‘Indeed! And pray how much do you know about him?’
+
+‘Everything. I have read Carlyle’s description of him in “Frederick the
+Great.” He was a horrid man; cringed to his goat-faced eminence Dubois;
+allowed himself to be caned by the Duc de Rohan’s hired bravoes, the
+Duc looking on out of a hackney coach window all the time.’
+
+‘Don’t say allowed himself. I don’t suppose he could help it.’
+
+‘He ought to have prevented it. Imagine a great man beginning his
+career by being beaten in the public streets.’
+
+‘Who knows that your Shakespeare did not get a sound drubbing from Sir
+Thomas Lucy’s gamekeepers, before he was stung into retaliating by
+that exquisitely refined lampoon which tradition ascribes to him? You
+worship your Swan of Avon for what he wrote, not for what he did. Can
+you not deal the same measure to Voltaire?’
+
+‘I don’t know anything of his writing, except a few speeches out of
+“Zaïre,” and an epitome of his “Louis Quatorze.” If you are going to
+put him on an equality with Shakespeare——’
+
+‘I am not. But I say that as an all-round literary worker he never had
+an equal, unless it were Scott, who has surpassed him in many things,
+and who could, I believe, have equalled him on any ground.’
+
+‘Scott was an old dear,’ answered Daphne, with her usual flippancy,
+‘and I would rather have “Kenilworth” and “The Bride of Lammermoor”
+than all this Voltaire of yours ever wrote.’
+
+‘And which you, most conscientious of critics, never read.’
+
+‘Well, Daphne, what do you think of the country?’ asked Madoline, now
+that they had left the city and were driving slowly up hill through a
+pastoral district. ‘Is it not pretty?’
+
+‘Pretty,’ cried Daphne, ‘of course it is pretty; but it isn’t Swiss.
+What do I care for prettiness? There is enough of that and to spare in
+Warwickshire. Why,’ with ineffable disgust, ‘the country is absolutely
+green!’
+
+‘What colour did you expect it to be?’ asked Edgar, smiling at her
+energetic displeasure.
+
+‘White, of course! One dazzling sweep of snow. One blinding world of
+whiteness.’
+
+‘If you want that kind of thing you had better go to the North Pole,’
+said Gerald.
+
+‘Not I. If this is Switzerland I have done with travelling. I daresay
+the North Pole is as tame as Stratford High Street.’
+
+‘Does not that grand Jura range frowning yonder content you?’ asked
+Gerald. ‘Is not your eye satisfied by the cloud-wrapped Alps on the
+other side of that blue lake?’
+
+‘No; they are too far off. I want to be among them—a part of them.
+After a hypocritical waiter telling me last night that Mont Blanc was
+_là, tout près_, a truthful chambermaid confessed this morning that it
+is fourteen hours’ drive to Chamounix, and then one is only at the foot
+of the mountain. As for this landscape we are now travelling through——’
+
+‘It is uncommonly like Jersey,’ said Edgar. ‘I took my mother there for
+her holiday five summers ago. It is a capital place for boating and
+rambling about, and crossing over to the other islands: but the mater
+didn’t like it. The people weren’t genteel enough for her. The gowns
+and bonnets weren’t up to her mark.’
+
+They were at Ferney by this time, a rustic village with one or two
+humble cafés, a few small shops, a farm-yard. Here Daphne descried
+a pair of oxen drawing a waggon of hay—noble beasts, dappled and
+tawny—and the sight of these gave a foreign air to the scene which in
+some wise lessened her disgust.
+
+A shaded shrubberied drive admitted them to the house where Voltaire
+lived so long and so peacefully, and which is now in the occupation of
+a gentleman who graciously allows it to be shown—rather ungraciously—by
+his major-domo. Lightly as Daphne had spoken of Voltaire, she was too
+keenly imaginative not to be interested in the house which any famous
+man had inhabited. Two quiet rooms, _salon_ and bed-chamber, looked
+into a short broad alley of trees, a garden, and summer-house perched
+high on the hillside, and commanding a wide prospect of fertile valley
+and gloomy mountain. All things in those two rooms were exactly as
+they had been in the great man’s lifetime; everything was exquisitely
+neat, and all the colours had faded to those delicate half-tints which
+the artistic soul loveth: faint grays and purples, fainter greens and
+fawn colours. Here was the narrow bed on which Voltaire slept, with its
+embroidered coverlet; chairs and _fauteuils_ covered with tapestry;
+walls upholstered with figured satin damask, pale with age; Lekain’s
+portrait over the bed; Madame du Châtelet’s opposite, where the great
+satirist’s cynical glance must have rested on it as he awakened from
+his slumbers.
+
+They all looked reverently at these things, hushed and subdued by the
+thought that they were amidst the surroundings of the dead; belongings
+that had once been familiar and precious to him who now slept the last
+long sleep in his vault at the Pantheon; where never-ending gangs of
+Cook’s tourists are perpetually being ushered into his mausoleum, and
+perpetually asking one another who was Voltaire?
+
+They loitered a little in the garden, wrote their names in a
+visitors’-book, and then went back to explore the village, and to take
+a modest luncheon of coffee and bread and butter, sour claret, and
+Gruyère cheese at one of the humble taverns, while the horses stood at
+ease before the door, and the driver refreshed himself modestly at the
+expense of his fare.
+
+They drove home to the hotel by a way which passed through a quaint
+village, and then skirted the lake, and which was somewhat more
+romantic than the country road by which they had come, and Daphne
+expressed herself satisfied, on the whole, with her first day in
+Switzerland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+‘FORBID A LOVE AND IT IS TEN TIMES SO WODE.’
+
+
+Sir Vernon showed himself especially gracious to his younger daughter
+and her lover next morning at breakfast, when the itinerary of their
+holiday was discussed. So far as his own pleasure was concerned, he
+would have liked nothing better than to go straight to Montreux, where
+a delightful villa, with a garden sloping to the lake, had been secured
+for his accommodation; but he did not forget that Daphne had seen
+nothing of Switzerland, and Edgar very little; and for their sakes he
+was ready to make considerable sacrifices.
+
+‘I am a wretched traveller, and I detest sight-seeing,’ he said
+languidly; ‘but I don’t wish to spoil other people’s pleasure. Suppose
+we make a little round before we settle down in our villa by the
+lake? Let us go to Fribourg and hear the organ, and then on to Berne
+for a day or so, and then to Interlaken. There I can rest quietly in
+my own rooms at the Jungfraublich, while you young people drive to
+Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, and do any little climbing in a mild way
+which is compatible with the safety of your necks and bones generally;
+and then we can come straight back to Montreux. How would you like
+that, Madoline?’
+
+‘Very much, indeed, dear father. It will be a delight to me to go over
+the old ground with Daphne.’
+
+‘And you, Goring?’
+
+‘I am Lina’s slave—her shadow; true as the dial to the sun.’
+
+‘Papa,’ said Daphne, drawing her chair nearer to him, and with a
+coaxing look which no man but a father could have resisted, ‘it is
+so good of you to propose such a charming trip, and I shall enjoy it
+immensely; but would it be any way possible, now we are so near, to go
+to Chamounix, and get to the top of Mont Blanc; or, at least, part of
+the way up?’
+
+‘No, my dear. Quite out of the question.’
+
+‘But it is only a drive to Chamounix; and there is a diligence goes
+every morning.’
+
+‘Edgar can take you there next year, when you are married. I am too old
+for a drive of fourteen hours’ duration.’
+
+Daphne looked miserable. Mont Blanc was the central point of all her
+desires. It irked her to be so near and not to reach the world-famous
+mountain. She looked at Edgar doubtfully. No; she could not realise the
+idea of coming back next year, alone with him. She had never been able
+to project her mind into that future in which they two should be one,
+bound by a sacred yoke, doomed to be for ever together. From any casual
+glance at such a future her mind always shrank away shudderingly, as
+from the dim memory of a bad dream.
+
+‘I don’t believe I shall ever come to Switzerland again,’ she said
+discontentedly, when breakfast was finished and her father had retired
+to his own room to write letters.
+
+Madoline was sitting at work by an open window, silken water-lilies and
+bulrushes developing themselves gradually under her skilful fingers, on
+a ground of sage-green cloth. The tables were covered with books and
+miniature stands; the room was bright with flowers, and looked almost
+as home-like as South Hill; but before the evening Mowser and Jinman
+would have packed all these things, and despatched the greater part of
+them to Montreux, while the travellers went on to Fribourg in light
+marching order, which in this case meant about three portmanteaux per
+head. Some books must, of course, be taken, and drawing materials, and
+fancy-work, and a writing-desk or two, and camp-stools for sitting
+about in romantic places, and a good deal more, which made a formidable
+array of luggage by-and-by when Sir Vernon and his family were
+assembled at the railway-station.
+
+‘Do you mean to tell me that we require all these things for a week or
+ten days?’ he said, scowling at the patient Jinman, who was standing
+on guard over a compact pyramid of trunks, portmanteaux, and Gladstone
+bags, umbrellas, sunshades, and heterogeneous etceteras.
+
+‘I don’t think there’s anything could have been dispensed with, Sir
+Vernon,’ answered Jinman. ‘The books and ornaments and most of the
+heavy luggage have gone on to Montrooks.’
+
+‘Great Heaven, in the face of this would any man marry, and make
+himself responsible for feminine existences!’ exclaimed Sir Vernon,
+shrugging his shoulders disgustedly as he turned away; yet Jinman could
+have informed him that his own share of the luggage was quite equal to
+that of his daughters.
+
+They were all established presently in a German railway compartment:
+Sir Vernon seated in his corner and absorbed in an English newspaper,
+whose ample sheet excluded every glimpse of lake and wooded slopes,
+Alps and Jura; while Edgar smoked on the platform outside, and Daphne
+stood at the open door, gazing at the changing landscape: the smiling
+lake below; the dark slopes and mountain range on the farther shore;
+the villages nestling in the valley on this nearer bank; the cosy
+little homesteads and bright gardens; the vine-clad terraces, divided
+by low gray walls; the quaint old churches, with tiled roofs and square
+clock-towers; and yonder, far away at the end of the lake, Chillon’s
+gloomy fortress, which she recognised with a cry of delight, having
+seen its presentment in engravings and photographs, and knowing Byron’s
+poem by heart.
+
+She gave a sigh of regret as a curve of the line carried her away from
+the azure lake and its panorama of hills.
+
+‘I can hardly bear to leave it,’ she said; ‘but, thank Heaven, we are
+coming back to it soon.’
+
+‘You are reconciled to Switzerland, then, in spite of your
+disillusions,’ said Gerald.
+
+‘Reconciled! I should like to live and die here.’
+
+‘What! abandon your beloved Shakespeare’s country?’
+
+‘I am heartily sick of Shakespeare’s country.’
+
+‘Daphne,’ cried Edgar, with a look of deepest mortification, ‘that is a
+bad look-out for poor old Hawksyard.’
+
+‘Hawksyard is a dear old place, but I don’t want to be reminded of
+it—or of anything else in Warwickshire—now I am in Switzerland. I want
+to soar, if I can. I am in Byron’s country. He lived there,’ pointing
+downwards to where they had left Lausanne and Ouchy. ‘He wrote some
+of his loveliest poetry there; his genius is for ever associated with
+these scenes. Sad, unsatisfied spirit!’
+
+Her eyes filled with sudden tears at the thought of that disappointed
+life, seeking solace from all that is loveliest in Nature, shunning the
+beaten tracks, yet never finding peace.
+
+‘If you are very good,’ said Gerald gravely, ‘within the next ten
+minutes I will show you something you are anxious to see.’
+
+‘What is that?’
+
+‘Mont Blanc. Get your glass ready.’
+
+‘Why, we left him behind us, across the lake, sulkily veiled in
+impenetrable cloud.’
+
+‘He will show himself more amiable presently. You will get a good view
+of him in five minutes if you focus your glass properly and don’t
+chatter.’
+
+Daphne spoke never a word, but stood motionless, with her landscape
+glass glued to her eyes, and waited, as for a divine revelation.
+
+Yes, yonder it arose, white and cloudlike on the edge of the blue
+summer sky, the mighty snow-clad range, of which Mont Blanc is but a
+detail—the grand inaccessible region; mountain-top beyond mountain-top;
+peak above peak; everlasting, untrodden hills, producing nothing,
+pasturing nothing, stupendous and ghastly as the polar seas; a world
+apart from all other worlds; a spectacle to awe the dullest soul and
+thrill the coldest heart; a revelation of Nature’s Titanic beauty.
+
+‘Oh, it must have been such mountains as those that the Titans hurled
+about them when they fought with Zeus,’ cried Daphne when she had gazed
+and gazed till the last gleam of those white crests vanished in the
+distance.
+
+‘Do you feel better?’ asked Gerald, with his mocking smile.
+
+‘I feel as if I had seen the world that we are to know after death,’
+answered Daphne.
+
+‘Would you be surprised to hear that these excrescences, which you
+think so grand, are but modern incidents in the history of the earth?
+Time was when Switzerland was one vast ice-field: nay, if we can
+believe Lyell, the clay of London was in course of accumulation as
+marine mud at a time when the ocean still rolled its waves over the
+space now occupied by some of the loftiest Alpine summits.’
+
+‘Please don’t be instructive,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I want to know
+nothing about them, except that they are there, and that they are
+beautiful.’
+
+At Fribourg they drove down the narrow street to the Zähringer Hof, the
+hotel by the suspension bridge, where from a balcony they looked down
+a sheer descent to the river, and to the roofs and chimneys of the old
+town lying in a cleft of the hills, while yonder, suspended in mid-air,
+a mere spider-thread across the sky, stretched the upper and loftier
+bridge. It was nearly dinner-time when they arrived. There were dark
+clouds on the horizon, and only gleams of watery sunshine behind the
+gray old watch-towers on the crest of the hill across the river.
+
+‘I’m afraid we are going to have another storm,’ said Gerald, lounging
+against the embrasure of a window, and looking as if Fribourg, with its
+modern suspension bridges and mediæval watch-towers, were just the most
+uninteresting place in the world.
+
+He looked thoroughly worn-out and weary, as if he had been
+labouring hard with body and mind all day, instead of lolling in a
+railway-carriage, staring listlessly at the landscape. Sir Vernon, the
+ostensible invalid, was not more languid.
+
+‘Let it come down,’ cried Daphne; ‘but whatever the weather may be,
+I shall go and hear the organ after dinner. There is the bell for
+vespers. How nice it is to find oneself in a Roman Catholic town, with
+vesper-bells ringing, and dear old priests and nuns and all sorts of
+picturesque creatures walking about the streets!’
+
+They dined in their own sitting-room, Sir Vernon having a good old
+English dislike to any intercourse with unintroduced fellow-creatures.
+To sit at a _table-d’hôte_ with the Tom, Dick, and Harry of cockney
+Switzerland would have been abhorrent to him.
+
+‘We may get a worse dinner in our own room,’ he said, looking
+doubtfully at some unknown spoon-food offered to him by way of an
+_entrée_, ‘but we avoid rubbing shoulders with the kind of people who
+travel nowadays.’
+
+‘Are they so much worse than the people who used to travel——’
+
+‘When I was a young man? Yes, Daphne, quite a different race,’ said Sir
+Vernon with authority. ‘Gerald was right. We are in for another storm.’
+
+A quiver of livid light, a crash of thunder, and black darkness yonder
+behind the hills gave emphasis to his statement. Daphne flew to the
+window to look at the bridges and the towers, which were almost
+expunged from the face of creation by a thick blinding rain. A waggon
+was crawling across the nearer and lower bridge, and the whole fabric
+rocked under its weight.
+
+‘Nobody will dream of going to the cathedral to-night,’ said Sir Vernon.
+
+But the waiter in attendance declared that everyone would go. There
+would be a concert on the great organ from eight to nine. The cathedral
+was close by; there would be a carriage in waiting at ten minutes to
+eight to convey those guests who graciously deigned to patronise the
+concert, for which the waiter was privileged to dispose of tickets.
+Furthermore, the storm would assuredly abate before long. It was but a
+thunder-shower.
+
+Daphne stood at the window watching the thunder-shower, which seemed
+to be drowning the lower town and flooding the river. The rain came
+down in torrents; the thunder roared and bellowed over the hills; the
+chainwork of the suspension bridge creaked and groaned.
+
+Sir Vernon protested that the storm made him nervous, and retired to
+his room, leaving the young people to do as they pleased.
+
+They sat in the stormy dusk sipping their coffee, ready to put on their
+hats and be off the minute the carriage was announced. Daphne wore a
+gown of some creamy-white material, which gave her a ghostly look in
+the gloom.
+
+‘You have heard this famous organ, Lina,’ she said. ‘Is it really worth
+stopping at Fribourg on purpose to hear it when, with a little more
+time and trouble, one might get half-way up Mont Blanc?’
+
+‘It is a wonderful organ; but you will be able to judge for yourself in
+a few minutes.’
+
+‘We should have been getting near Chamounix by this time, if we had
+started by this morning’s diligence,’ sighed Daphne.
+
+‘Restless, unsatisfied soul! still harping on the mountain,’ said
+Gerald.
+
+‘I have seen him, at least,’ exclaimed Daphne, clasping her hands;
+‘that is something. Far, far away, like a glimpse of another world: but
+still I have seen him. Shall we see him again to-morrow, do you think,
+on the way to Interlaken?’
+
+‘I’m afraid not. To-morrow I shall have the honour to introduce you to
+the Jungfrau.’
+
+‘I don t care a straw for her,’ exclaimed Daphne contemptuously.
+
+‘What, not for Manfred’s mountain? Can you, who have so devoured your
+Byron, be indifferent to the background of that gloomy individual’s
+existence?’
+
+‘There is an interest in that, certainly; but Mont Blanc is my
+beau-ideal of a mountain.’
+
+Here the carriage was announced. The two girls put on their hats and
+wraps, soft China crape and gray camel’s-hair shawls, and hurried down
+to the hall. The rain was still falling, the thunder still grumbling
+amidst distant hills. They crowded into the fly, and were jolted over
+stony and uneven ways to the cathedral.
+
+They went in at a narrow little door to a great dark church, with
+solitary lamps dotted about here and there in the gloom. Everything had
+a mysterious look; the richly-carved oak, the shrines, the chapels, the
+shrouded altar far away at the end.
+
+There were, perhaps, a hundred people sitting about in high narrow pews
+with massive carved oak seats, sitting here and there in a scattered
+way, all wrapped in shadow and gloom, silent, overawed, expectant.
+
+Madoline and Daphne walked side by side up the long nave, between two
+lines of oaken seats, the two men following; then midway between the
+organ and the altar, they went into one of the pews—Lina first, then
+Daphne. She had been sitting there a minute or so looking about the dim
+dark church before she discovered that it was Gerald, and not Edgar,
+who sat by her side. Edgar had taken the seat behind them.
+
+They sat there for five or ten minutes, hushed and listening; the rain
+splashing on the roof, the distant thunder reverberating; nothing to
+be seen in the vast building but those yellow lamps gleaming here and
+there, and patching with faint light an isolated statue, or a pulpit,
+or a clustered column.
+
+At last, when the silence, broken only by faintest whisperings among
+the expectant audience, had endured for what seemed a weary while,
+the organ pealed forth in a grand burst of sound, which swept along
+the arched roof, and filled the church with music. Then after that
+crash of mighty chords came tenderest phrases, a flowing melody that
+sank low as a whisper, and then that strain of almost supernatural
+likeness to the human voice rose up above the legato arpeggios of the
+accompaniment, and thrilled every ear—tender, angelic, a divine whisper
+of love and melancholy. Daphne had risen from her seat, and stood with
+her arms resting upon the massive woodwork in front of her, gazing up
+through the darkness towards that glimmering spot of light yonder,
+near the arch of the roof, which showed where the organ was, far away,
+mysterious.
+
+Oh, that heavenly voice, with its soul-moving sadness! A rush of tears
+streamed from her eyes; she stretched out her hands unconsciously, as
+if yearning for some human touch to break the mournful spell of that
+divine sorrow, and the hand nearest Gerald was clasped in the darkness;
+clasped by a warm strong hand which held it and kept it—kept it without
+a struggle, for, alas! it lay unresistingly in his. They drew a little
+nearer to each other involuntarily, shudderingly happy—with the deep
+sense of an unpardonable guilt, a shameful treason; yet forgetting
+everything except that vain foolish love against which both had fought
+long and valiantly.
+
+A peal of thunder on the organ within, an answering peal from the storm
+without. The mimic tempest blended itself with heaven’s own artillery;
+and at the terrible sound those guilty creatures in the church let go
+each other’s hands. Daphne clasped hers before her face, and sank on
+her knees.
+
+‘Pity me and help me, O God!’ she prayed, and looking up she saw just
+above her in a marble niche the image of the Mother of God; and in this
+moment of temptation and self-abandonment, it seemed to her a natural
+thing that women should ask a woman’s mediation in their hour of sorrow.
+
+A funeral hymn of Sebastian Bach’s pealed from the organ with an awful
+grandeur which thrilled every listener; and then came a silence, and
+after that the low murmur of the storm dying away in the distance, from
+the overture to ‘William Tell,’ the flutelike tones of the ‘_Ranz des
+Vaches_,’ telling of pastoral valleys and solemn mountains, a life of
+Arcadian innocence and peace.
+
+With those lighter, gayer strains the concert ended, and they all went
+slowly and silently out of the church. The storm was over, and the moon
+was breaking through dark clouds.
+
+‘Don’t let us go back in that jingling abomination of a fly,’ said
+Gerald, striding on over the wet pavement, leaving the two girls to
+follow with Edgar Turchill.
+
+They picked their way through the streets. The town was all dark and
+quiet, save for a glimmering yellow candle here and there under a
+gable; there was none of the brightness and out-of-door life of a
+French town. A couple of omnibuses and a fly or two carried off the
+people who had been in the cathedral to their several hotels.
+
+Gerald Goring was waiting for them in front of the Zähringer.
+
+‘What made you hurry on so?’ asked Madoline wonderingly.
+
+‘Did I hurry? I think it was you others who crawled. That music
+irritated my nerves a little. It is full of studied effects; the
+organist has trained himself to play upon the emotions of his audience,
+now soaring to the seraph choir, now going down to the depths of
+Pandemonium. The thunderstorm and the organ together would have been
+too much for anybody. Oh, pray don’t go indoors yet,’ he exclaimed, as
+they were all three moving towards the entrance of the hotel. ‘Let us
+go for a walk on the bridge. Don’t you know that after the organ the
+great feature of Fribourg is the bridge?’
+
+‘If we are to be on our way to Interlaken to-morrow, we had better see
+all we can to-night,’ said the practical Edgar.
+
+They went on the bridge; Gerald still walking ahead, and keeping in
+some wise aloof from them. Daphne had not spoken since they left the
+cathedral.
+
+‘Had the music an unpleasant effect upon you too, dear, that you are so
+silent?’ Madoline asked, as they two walked side by side.
+
+‘It was only too beautiful,’ answered Daphne.
+
+‘And you are glad we came here.’
+
+‘No. Yes. I would rather have been half-way up Mont Blanc.’
+
+‘Poor child! But that is a pleasure in reserve for another holiday. I
+know Edgar will take you wherever you like to go.’
+
+‘Do you think so? What a dance I shall lead him!’ cried Daphne with
+a mocking laugh. ‘I shall not be content with Mont Blanc or the
+Matterhorn. I shall insist upon seeing all the extinct volcanoes, the
+wonderful fiery mountains that have burned themselves out. Cotopaxi is
+about the mildest hill he will be invited to climb.’
+
+Mr. Turchill had dropped into the background, and was quietly enjoying
+his cigar, unaware of the pleasures in store for him. Gerald walked
+ever so far ahead, cigarless, a gloomy figure.
+
+‘I’m afraid either the thunder or the organ has given Gerald one of his
+nervous headaches,’ said Lina anxiously.
+
+The moon showed herself fitfully athwart hurrying clouds, now lighting
+up hills and watch-towers, river and rugged ravine, with a wild
+Salvator-Rosa-esque effect, now hidden altogether, and leaving all in
+gloom. Midway upon the bridge Madoline and Daphne stopped, and stood
+looking down into the hollow below, where the quiet sleeping town
+was dimly visible, with its quaint street lamps, and rare gleams of
+light from narrow casements, and stony ways shining after the rain.
+Here, when they had stood for some minutes, Edgar joined them, having
+finished his cigar, and he and Madoline began to talk about the place;
+he questioning, she expounding its features.
+
+While they two were talking, Gerald came slowly back, and stood by
+Daphne’s side, a few paces apart from the others. She said never a
+word. They stood side by side for some minutes like statues. She was
+wondering if he could hear the passionate throbbing of her heart, which
+would not be stilled.
+
+They were standing thus, as if bound by a spell, when a heavy waggon
+came creeping slowly along the bridge, making the spot on which they
+stood tremble and sway under their feet.
+
+‘We are hanging by a thread between time and eternity,’ said Gerald,
+drawing closer to her. ‘What if the thread were to snap, and drop us,
+hand in hand, into the black gulf of death?’
+
+She did not shudder at the thought, but turned and looked at him in the
+moonlight, with a strange sad smile.
+
+‘Would you be glad?’ he asked softly.
+
+‘Yes,’ she answered, between a sigh and a whisper, still looking up
+at him with that pathetic smile; and his eyes looked fondly down into
+hers, losing themselves in the depth of a fathomless mystery.
+
+‘Do you know that this bridge is the second longest in the world,
+three hundred yards long, and a hundred and sixty-eight feet above
+the river?’ asked Edgar Turchill’s matter-of-fact tones, as he walked
+towards them, cheerful, contented, pleased with himself and all the
+world.
+
+‘For God’s sake spare us a gush of second-hand Baedeker,’ cried Gerald
+with intense irritation. ‘As if any living soul, except a Cook’s
+tourist, could care how many feet or how many yards long a bridge is.
+It is the effect one values, the general idea that one is on that very
+bridge of Al Sirât, laid over the midst of hell, and finer than a
+hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, over which the righteous
+must pass to Mahomet’s paradise. It is the notion of man’s audacity in
+making perilous ways that is really delightful. When that waggon went
+across just now, I thought the last straw was being laid, and we were
+all going.’
+
+Edgar came round to Daphne with a calm air of proprietorship which made
+her shudder.
+
+‘What an interesting evening we have had!’ he said.
+
+‘Very.’
+
+‘You look pale and tired. Has it all been too much for you?’ he asked
+tenderly.
+
+‘I think that organ would be too much for anyone.’
+
+‘Do you know—I am no judge, and you mustn’t laugh at me for expressing
+an opinion—I hardly thought it equal, as an organ, to the one at St.
+Paul’s. I took my mother there once when all the charity children were
+assembled. I can’t tell you what a grand sight it was, the dome crowded
+with their fresh young faces.’
+
+‘Oh, for pity’s sake don’t talk about it,’ cried Daphne, almost
+hysterically. ‘To compare that dark solemn cathedral, with just a few
+people dotted about among the shadows, and the thunder pealing over the
+roof—to compare such a scene with that pagan St. Paul’s, and the dome
+crowded with rosy-cheeked children, all white caps and pinafores and
+yellow worsted stockings!’
+
+‘I was talking of the organ,’ replied Edgar, somewhat offended.
+
+‘Then why introduce the charity children? Oh, please let my thoughts
+dwell upon that dark church to-night; let me remember the music, the
+darkness.’
+
+‘Daphne, dearest one, you are crying,’ exclaimed Edgar, startled at the
+sound of a stifled sob.
+
+‘Who would not cry at such music?’
+
+‘But so long after. You are nervous and hysterical.’
+
+‘I am only tired. Please don’t worry me,’ retorted Daphne fretfully,
+wrapping herself tightly in her soft gray shawl, and quickening her
+pace.
+
+She said not a word more till they were inside the Zähringer Hof,
+when she wished the other three a brief good-night, declaring herself
+utterly worn out, and tripped lightly upstairs to her room on the
+second storey. Madoline’s room was next her sister’s, and when she
+went up a few minutes later, and knocked at the door of communication
+between the two rooms, Daphne excused herself from opening it.
+
+‘I’m dreadfully sleepy, dear,’ she said; ‘please leave me alone for
+to-night!’
+
+‘Willingly, dearest, if you are sure you are not ill.’
+
+‘Not the least in the world.’
+
+‘And there is nothing you want Mowser to do for you?’
+
+‘Nothing. She has unpacked my things. I have everything I want.’
+
+‘Then good-night, and God bless you.’
+
+‘Good-night,’ answered Daphne, but invoked no blessing upon the sister
+she loved so well. Prayer breathed from such a guilty heart would be
+almost blasphemy.
+
+She walked up and down the room for a long time, up and down, up and
+down, her soul filled with ineffable joy. Yes; guilty, treacherous,
+vile, ungrateful as she knew herself to be, she could not stifle that
+wild sense of happiness, the rapture of knowing herself beloved by
+the man she loved. Nothing but evil could ever come out of that love;
+nothing but struggle, and sorrow, and pain; yet it was deep delight to
+have been loved, the one perfect joy that was possible for her upon
+this earth. To have missed it would have been never to have lived: and
+now death might come when it would. She had lived her life; she had had
+her day.
+
+That this love was a thing of guilt, a scorpion to be crushed and
+trodden under her foot, she never questioned. Not for an instant
+did it enter into her mind that she could profit by Gerald Goring’s
+inconstancy, that she was to take to herself the lover whose faith had
+been violated by to-night’s revelation. Never did it occur to her that
+any alteration in his future or hers was involved in the admissions
+which each had made to the other.
+
+‘He knows that I love him; he knows how weak and vile I am,’ she said
+to herself. ‘If Lina were to know too? If she were to see me with
+the mask off my face, what a monster of perfidy and ingratitude I
+should seem to her! Oh, I should die of shame. I could never endure
+the discovery. And to make her unhappy—her to whom I owe so much, my
+dearest, my best, the guardian angel of my life. Oh, Lina, Lina, if you
+knew!’
+
+She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, and, with hands clasped
+above her head, breathed her passionate prayer:
+
+‘Let me die to-night. Oh, Thou who knowest how sinful and weak I am,
+let me die to-night!’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+‘I MAY NOT DON AS EVERY PLOUGHMAN MAY.’
+
+
+A chambermaid brought Daphne a letter at half-past six o’clock next
+morning. She had fallen asleep in the summer sunlight after a night of
+almost utter sleeplessness; the warm air blowing in upon her across
+the hills on the opposite side of the river; the noises of the early
+awakened town floating up from the valley below.
+
+She started from her pillow, scared and agitated at the sound of
+the chambermaid’s knock, and took the letter with a trembling hand.
+Gerald’s writing! She knew it too well; yet this was the first letter
+he had ever addressed to her.
+
+‘How dare he write to me?’ she exclaimed angrily, as she tore open the
+envelope.
+
+The letter began with no fond words of endearment. The writer dashed at
+his meaning with passionate directness, with feeling too intense to be
+eloquent.
+
+ ‘Tell me what I am to do. After last night, my future, my life, are in
+ your hands. Both belong to you if you will have them. Shall I break
+ the truth to Lina? Shall I tell her how, little by little, in spite of
+ myself, my heart has been beguiled away from that calm affection which
+ was once all-sufficient for the joy of life; how a new and passionate
+ love has replaced the old; and that, although I shall honour, respect,
+ and admire her as the first and best of women till the end of my days,
+ I am no longer, I never can be again, her lover? I think, Daphne, that
+ the hard, outspoken, brutal truth may be the wisest and best. Let us
+ look Fate in the face. Neither you nor I can ever be happy asunder.
+ Will the sacrifice of my happiness secure Lina’s? Answer me from your
+ heart of hearts, my beloved, as you answered me on the bridge last
+ night.’
+
+There was not an instant’s doubt in Daphne’s mind as to how this letter
+must be answered. Lina’s happiness sacrificed to hers! Lina, so good,
+so pure-minded, in all things so much above her, to be made miserable,
+in order that she might triumph in a successful treachery!
+
+‘I don’t think the most virtuous person in the world could loathe me
+worse than I should loathe myself, if I were to do this thing,’ she
+said to herself resolutely.
+
+She sat down by the open window, wrapped in her loose white
+dressing-gown, her soft golden hair falling over her shoulders like a
+veil, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy, an image of youthful sorrow.
+
+ ‘Not for this wide world,’ she wrote, answering Gerald Goring’s
+ question as directly as he had asked it, ‘not to be completely and
+ unspeakably happy would I rob my sister of her happiness; not if it
+ could be done without making me a monster of ingratitude, the most
+ treacherous and despicable of women. All you and I have to do is to
+ forget our folly of last night, and to be true, each of us, to the
+ promises we have made. You would be, indeed, a loser, condemned to
+ pay a life-long penalty for your foolishness, if you could barter
+ such a flower as Madoline for such a weed as me. Be true to her, and
+ you will find your reward in that truth. Do you know how good she is;
+ how priceless in her purity and love; and could you let her go for my
+ sake—for a creature who is compounded of faults and inconsistencies,
+ caprices, self-will; a creature with no more soul than Undine?
+ Remember how long she has loved you; think how much she is above you
+ in the beauty of her character; how fitted she is to make your home
+ happy, your life nobler and better than it could ever be without
+ her. Why, if, in some moment of madness, you were to surrender her
+ love, your life to come would be one long regret for having lost her.
+ Forget, as I shall forget; be true, as I will be true, heaven helping
+ me; and let me write myself, without a blush, in this my first, and,
+ perhaps, my last letter to you,—Your Sister,
+
+  DAPHNE.’
+
+Her eyes were streaming with tears as she wrote. Every word came from
+her heart. There was no duplicity of thought, no lurking hope that
+Gerald might refuse to be ruled by her. She wrote to him faithfully,
+honestly, resolutely, her heart and mind exalted by her intense
+love of her sister. And when the letter was sealed and given to the
+chambermaid—who must have wondered a little at this outbreak of
+letter-writing before breakfast as a new development in the British
+tourist—she stole softly to the door leading into Madoline’s room and
+opened it as noiselessly as she could.
+
+Lina was still asleep, the calm beautiful face turned towards the
+sunlight, the long dark lashes dropping on the oval cheek, the lips
+faintly parted. Daphne crept to the bed-side and sat down beside her
+sister’s pillow. Lina awoke and looked up at her.
+
+‘My pet, have you been here long? Is it late?’ she asked.
+
+‘Late for you, love. About half-past seven. I have only this moment
+come in.’
+
+‘How white and haggard you look!’ said Lina anxiously. ‘Have you had a
+bad night?’
+
+‘I did not sleep particularly well. I seldom can in a strange place.’
+
+‘Daphne, I am afraid you are ill—or unhappy. There was something in
+your manner last night that alarmed me.’
+
+‘I am not ill: and I have not felt so happy for a long time as I feel
+this morning.’
+
+‘Why, dearest?’
+
+‘Because I have been making good resolutions, and I mean to act upon
+them.’
+
+‘Would it be too much to ask what they are?’
+
+‘Oh, a general determination to be very obedient to you, and very
+respectful to my father, and very tolerant of Edgar’s stupidities, and
+all that kind of thing, don’t you know?’
+
+‘My darling, I can’t bear to hear you talk of Edgar like that. He is so
+thoroughly good.’
+
+‘Yes,’ sighed Daphne, with an air of resignation. ‘If there were only a
+little rift in his goodness, I should get on with him so much better.
+It is dreadful to have to deal with a man whose excellence is always
+putting one to shame.’
+
+‘I think you could be easily worthy of him.’
+
+‘No, I couldn’t. And if I could I wouldn’t. And now I must run away
+and dress, for I want to explore those hills across the river before
+breakfast.’
+
+She looked bright and fresh and full of youthful energy an hour
+afterwards, when she went down to the sitting-room, where Edgar was
+loafing about wearily, longing for her to appear. Her neat tailor gown
+of darkest olive cashmere, and coquettish little olive-green toque,
+set off the pearly tints of her complexion and the brightness of her
+loosely-coiled hair. She came into the room buttoning a long Swedish
+glove, the turned-back sleeve showing the round white arm.
+
+‘What a fetching get-up,’ said Edgar, who was apt to embellish his
+speech with those flowers of slang which are in everybody’s mouth; ‘but
+what is the use of those long gloves tucked away under the sleeve of
+your gown?’
+
+‘No use,’ answered Daphne; ‘but they’re fashionable. I want you to
+come and ramble on that hill over there before breakfast. Do you mind?’
+
+‘Mind!’ cried Edgar. ‘You know I am always delighted to walk with you.
+But, I say, Daphne, what was the matter with you last night? You were
+so cross.’
+
+‘I know I was; but I am never going to be cross again. I am going to
+turn over a new leaf. I have been wild and wilful, but I am not wilful
+now.’
+
+‘You are always the dearest and best of girls,’ answered Edgar
+fatuously.
+
+They passed Gerald Goring on the stairs. Daphne gave him a friendly
+nod, just the easiest salutation possible; but her cheek paled as she
+went by, and her reply to Edgar’s next observation was somewhat wide of
+the mark.
+
+He talked Baedeker to her as they went across the bridge; and he talked
+Baedeker about the watch-towers; and still again Baedeker when, in the
+course of their wanderings, they came to a chapel on a height, from
+whence there was a lovely view, exquisitely beautiful in the clear calm
+summer morning. They roamed about together till it was time to go back
+to the ten o’clock breakfast, by which hour Sir Vernon had resigned
+himself to the ordeal of facing his family.
+
+After breakfast there came more sight-seeing, Sir Vernon having decided
+upon going on to Berne by a late afternoon train. So they all set out
+together in a roomy landau to explore the town and neighbourhood. They
+went into the arsenal, where a funny old man in a blue blouse showed
+them ancient and modern gunnery. They saw the venerable lime-tree which
+stands in front of the Town Hall and the Rathhaus, propped up with
+wood and stone; a tree which, according to tradition, was originally a
+twig borne by a young native of Fribourg when he arrived in the town,
+breathless from loss of blood, to bring the news of the victory of
+Morat. ‘Victory!’ he gasped, and died.
+
+Gerald, more than usually cynical this morning, declined to believe in
+either the twig or the heroic messenger.
+
+‘I always shut my mind against all these romantic stories upon
+principle,’ he said languidly. ‘The outcome of all modern research—Mr.
+Brewer, and all the rest of it—is to prove that none of these
+delightful traditions has a germ of truth in it. It saves a great deal
+of trouble to begin by disbelieving them.’
+
+They went about the town in rather a dawdling desultory way, looking at
+the fronts of old houses, at the queer little shops, and finally paused
+before the church of St. Nicholas, which they had seen so dimly last
+night. Edgar insisted upon going in, but Daphne would go no farther
+than the doorway, where she looked respectfully at the bas-reliefs
+which she was told to admire.
+
+‘I saw quite enough of it last night,’ she said, when Edgar urged her
+to go in and explore the interior.
+
+‘Why, Daphne, it was too dark for you to see anything.’
+
+‘All churches are alike,’ she answered impatiently. ‘Please don’t
+worry.’
+
+Sir Vernon, who happened to be within earshot, looked at his daughter
+curiously, wondering at this development of modern manners. Could a
+pearly delicacy of complexion, luminous eyes of that dark gray which
+is almost violet, and bright gold hair, quite make amends for this
+utter want of courtesy? But Edgar appeared perfectly content to be so
+treated; and it was Edgar who was most concerned in the matter.
+
+They dawdled away a long morning seeing the town and driving about
+the somewhat pastoral landscape which surrounds it, lunched late, and
+started at five o’clock for Berne, where they arrived at the Berner
+Hof in time for a late dinner. Daphne grumbled a little on the way,
+protesting against the landscape between Fribourg and Berne as a
+relapse into English pastoral scenery.
+
+‘What do I want with meadows, and orchards, and cottages?’ she
+exclaimed. ‘I can see those in England. If it were not for the cows
+living on the ground-floor, and the fodder being carried up to the roof
+by those queer slanting covered ways, there wouldn’t be a shade of
+difference between the houses here and those at home, except that these
+are ever so much dirtier.’
+
+‘You ought to have come a few million years ago, when Switzerland was a
+glacial chaos,’ said Gerald.
+
+The Berner Hof pleased Sir Vernon by its spaciousness and air of
+English comfort, but it impressed Daphne as an hotel which would have
+been more in keeping with Liverpool or Manchester.
+
+‘I had quite made up my mind that in Switzerland we should stop at
+wooden _châlets_ perched upon mountain ledges, with an impending
+avalanche always in view, and the “_Ranz des Vaches_” sounding in the
+distance all day long.’
+
+‘There are such hostelries,’ answered Gerald; ‘but I think, if you
+found yourself at one of them, you would be rather inclined to wish
+yourself at the Berner Hof, or the Beau Rivage.’
+
+Next day was the first Tuesday in the month, and the occasion of the
+monthly market, a grand assemblage of small dealers from the adjacent
+country.
+
+They all went out directly after breakfast, and proceeded straight
+to the noble central street, a mile in length, which under various
+names pierces the town in a straight unbroken line from one end to
+the other. Very old and quaint are the houses in this long street,
+many of them built over arcades, under which the foot-passengers walk,
+and within whose arches the market-people set out their stalls. The
+drapery stalls, gay with many-coloured handkerchiefs fluttering in the
+summer air; the jewellers’ stalls, all twinkling and flashing with that
+silver trinketry which is a national institution, chains of endless
+length, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, glittering in the sun; stalls
+loaded with fruits and vegetables; stalls of gaudy-coloured pottery,
+jugs and jars of queerest, quaintest shapes; and up and down the stony
+street cows and oxen being led perpetually, meek, submissive, gentle,
+beautiful, in an endless procession; while every here and there under
+a countryman’s cart the patient dogs of burden lay at rest, placid
+but watchful, faithful guardians of the master’s property. It was a
+scene of picturesque and national life which pleased Daphne immensely.
+She had never seen such a market before, never seen so long a street,
+except the monotonous length of a Parisian boulevard as she was being
+jolted along in a fly from station to station. Here she saw the people
+in their national costume. Here Switzerland seemed really Swiss.
+
+She flew from stall to stall, admiring, selecting, bargaining, wanting
+to buy a barrowful of red and orange pots and pans.
+
+‘They would look so lovely in the corridor at South Hill, on high
+brackets,’ she said.
+
+‘I’m afraid the brackets would have to be very high,’ answered Lina,
+smiling at her.
+
+‘I suppose you mean that for a sneer,’ retorted Daphne, ‘but if Mr.
+Burne Jones, or Mr. Rosetti, or Mr. Morris were to say those pots and
+pans were the right thing, there would be an eruption of them over the
+walls of every fashionable room in England. I consider them positively
+lovely. And as for the silver chains, I shall never live without one
+round my neck.’
+
+‘Come and make your selection,’ said Edgar, pointing to one of
+the biggest and grandest stalls in the open place near the famous
+clock-tower, where the cock was to crow, and the figure of grim old
+Time was to turn his glass, and all manner of wonderful things were
+to happen just before the striking of the hour. This stall showed the
+best array of silver trinketry which they had seen yet, and the country
+people were clustered about it, gazing at the bright new silver, and
+a good deal at golden-haired Daphne in her creamy Indian silk gown, a
+radiant figure under a creamy silk umbrella.
+
+‘Choose the prettiest, Daphne, and wear it for my sake,’ said Edgar,
+with his portly leather purse in his hand, an English pigeon offering
+himself up to be plucked.
+
+‘_Combien?_’ he asked, rather proud of his readiness with a foreign
+language, pointing to the handsomest of the chains, a duster of many
+slender chainlets, about three yards long.
+
+‘_Wie viel?_’ asked Daphne, with a compassionate glance at her
+affianced.
+
+‘It is ver sheep,’ answered the vendor, showing a disgusting
+familiarity with the English tongue. ‘Gut und sheep, sehr schön, ver
+prurty, funf pound Englees.’
+
+‘Five pounds!’ screamed Daphne: ‘why, I thought it would be about five
+shillings! Pray come away, Mr. Turchill. They see we are English.’
+
+She turned from the stall indignantly, and marched across to look
+at the fountain, where the gigantic figure of an ogre, in the act
+of dropping a child into the yawning cavern of his jaws, stands out
+against the tall white houses, balconied, jalousied, like a bit of
+Parisian boulevard made picturesque by a dash of Swiss quaintness.
+The vegetables and the pottery stalls, and the fluttering cotton
+handkerchiefs were grouped all about the fountain, a confusion of vivid
+colour.
+
+‘That is something like a statue,’ cried Daphne, looking up
+unblinkingly at the giant grinning at her through a warm hazy
+atmosphere. ‘A dear old thing which recalls the fairy-tales of
+one’s childhood, instead of a stupid old Anglo-Indian general, whom
+nobody ever heard of, riding a tame old horse. Why don’t we have
+Kindlifressers and other fairy tale statues in the London streets? They
+would make London ever so much livelier.’
+
+Here Edgar came after her, carrying a small box neatly papered and tied
+up, which he put into her hand.
+
+‘May you never wear heavier fetters than these!’ he said, having
+composed the little speech as he came along.
+
+‘What,’ she exclaimed, ‘did you actually buy the chain after all? Well,
+I do despise you. Could you not see that the man was swindling you?’
+
+‘He was not so bad as you think. I only gave him three pounds for the
+chain, and I believe it is worth as much as that. I should think it
+cheap at thirty if you were pleased with it,’ he added, with homely
+tenderness.
+
+‘Oh, you poor predestined victim to extortion,’ exclaimed Daphne,
+looking at him with a serio-comic air. ‘Such a man as you ought never
+to go about without a keeper. However, as you have been so good as
+to allow yourself to be fleeced for my sake, I accept the chain with
+pleasure, and will wear it as the badge of my future captivity.’
+
+She shot a swift side-glance at Gerald as she spoke, curious to see
+how he took this direct allusion to an engagement which it had been
+her habit somewhat to ignore. He was standing looking listlessly along
+the street, interested neither in man nor woman; but though he had an
+air of utter vacancy, eyes that saw not, ears that heard not, Daphne
+detected a quiver of lip and brow, which showed her that the shot had
+gone home.
+
+Sir Vernon had gone to the museum to look at the pictures, leaving the
+young people free to wander where they pleased until dinner-time. They
+went up and down the arched ways, looking at the shops and stalls, the
+country people, the dogs, the cattle; then turned aside from this busy
+thoroughfare, where all the life and commerce of the canton seemed to
+have concentrated itself, to explore the dusky cathedral, where all was
+silence, and coolness, and repose. There was one great disappointment
+for Daphne. The grand panoramic picture of the Alps, for which the
+minster terrace is celebrated, was not on view to-day. The mountains
+hid themselves behind a gauzy veil, a warm vapour which thickened the
+air above the old city.
+
+‘I can’t think what I have done to offend the Alps,’ cried Daphne
+petulantly. ‘They seem to bear a grudge against me. They wouldn’t show
+me their frosty pows at Geneva, and they won’t at Berne. I am not going
+to break my heart about them, however. Please let us get the cathedral
+over as fast as we can, and go and look at the bears. I am dying to see
+the live bears; for I have seen so many inanimate ones in stone, and
+wood, and iron, that I seem to have bears on the brain.’
+
+They were standing in the open square in front of the cathedral,
+looking up at the bronze statue of Rudolph von Erlach, with the four
+seated bears at its base. They went into the church presently, and
+admired the fifteenth-century stained glass, and sculptured Pietas, and
+the choir stalls. As they were leaving the church, they saw a man and
+a woman going quietly into the vestry, preceded by the minister in his
+black gown.
+
+‘A wedding evidently,’ whispered Edgar to Daphne. ‘Wouldn’t you like to
+see a Swiss wedding?’
+
+‘Do you think they are going to be married? What a sober idea of
+matrimony! I should have thought a Swiss wedding would have been like a
+scene in an opera.’
+
+An inquiry of the verger proved that it was really a wedding, so
+they all crept quietly into the spacious vestry, and stood in the
+background, while the priest tied the knot according to the Calvinistic
+manner.
+
+It was not a grandiose or thrilling ceremonial, yet there was a
+certain sober earnestness in its very simplicity. The rite, shorn
+of all ornament, was a religious rite performed with all the grave
+businesslike straightforwardness of a civil agreement. Matrimony thus
+approached wore a somewhat appalling aspect: no sweet harmony of boyish
+voices shrilling a bridal hymn; no mighty organ exploding suddenly
+in the crashing chords of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; only a man
+and woman standing before a priest in a naked stony vestry; a priest
+who interrogated them coldly, with his eyes on his book, very much
+as if he had been hearing them their Catechism. The man had a dull
+indifferent look, and there was that in the bearing and appearance
+of the dowdily-dressed woman which hinted that the marriage was an
+after-thought.
+
+Daphne shuddered as she came out of the sunless vestry.
+
+‘That is not my idea of a quiet wedding,’ she said. ‘Please let us go
+to the bears; I am dying to see something cheerful.’
+
+They went back to the crowded arcades, the stalls, the processional
+cattle, and all the life and bustle of a monthly market, and down the
+whole length of the street, till they found themselves on a bridge that
+spanned a deep hollow between two hills. On one side of the bridge
+they looked down into the cattle market, where a multitude of blue
+blouses, of every shade and tone, from the vivid azure garment bought
+yesterday, to the faded and patched coat of age and poverty, mixed up
+with the brown, and cream, and roan, and dun of the cows and oxen,
+made a wonderful harmony in blues and browns. On the other side there
+was a famous bear-pit, where half-a-dozen mangy-looking animals are
+maintained in a state of inglorious repose for the honour of the city.
+
+The bear is not a handsome or a graceful beast, nor does his woolly
+front beam with intelligence. Yet he has a look of ponderous
+benevolence, a placid air of being nobody’s enemy but his own, which
+commends him to those who enjoy his acquaintance only at a distance.
+He is fond of being fed, and has an amiable greediness, which brings
+him in direct sympathy with his patrons. There is something childlike,
+too, and distinctly human in his love of buns, to say nothing of his
+innate aptitude for dancing. These qualities are liable to distract
+the judgment of his admirers, who forget that at heart he is still a
+savage, and that his hug is mortal.
+
+Daphne had provided herself with a bag of cakes, and immediately
+became on the friendliest terms with three ragged-looking Bruins who
+were squatting on their haunches, ready to receive the favours of
+an admiring public. She would not believe Baedeker’s story of the
+English officer, who fell into the den, and was killed by these woolly
+monsters, after a desperate fight for life.
+
+‘I couldn’t credit anything unkind of them,’ she protested. ‘See how
+patiently that dear thing waits, with his mouth wide open, and how
+dexterously he catches a bit of roll.’
+
+Even the delight of leaning upon a stone parapet to feed bears in a not
+too odoriferous den must come to an end at last, and Daphne, having
+had enough of the national beasts, consented to get into a roomy open
+carriage which Gerald had found while she was dispensing her favours,
+to the admiration of half-a-dozen country people, who were leaning
+lazily against the parapet, and wondering at the beauty of the two
+English girls in their cool delicate-hued raiment.
+
+There was plenty to admire in the neighbourhood of Berne, albeit the
+Alps were in hiding, and after a light luncheon at a confectioner’s
+in one of the arcades, they drove about till it was time to dress for
+dinner.
+
+They started early on the next afternoon for Thun, and between Berne
+and Thun the Jungfrau first revealed herself in all her virginal
+beauty—whiter, purer than all the rest of the mountain world—to
+Daphne’s delighted eyes. Never could she take her fill of gazing on
+that divine pinnacle, that heaven-aspiring mount, rising above a
+cluster of satellite hills, like Jupiter surrounded by his moons.
+
+‘If you told me that on that very mountain-top Moses saw God, I should
+believe you,’ cried Daphne, deeply moved.
+
+‘I am sorry to say the pinnacle on which Jehovah revealed Himself to
+His chosen mouthpiece is a shabby affair in comparison with yonder
+peak, a mere hillock of seven thousand feet or so,’ said Gerald,
+looking up from the day before yesterday’s _Times_.
+
+‘You have seen it?’
+
+‘I have stood on Serbâl, and Gebel Mousa, and Bas Sasâfeh, the three
+separate mountain-tops which contend for the honour of having been
+trodden by the feet of the Creator.’
+
+‘How delightful to have seen so much of this world!’
+
+‘And to have so little left in this world to see,’ answered Gerald;
+‘there is always the reverse of the shield.’
+
+‘It will make it all the pleasanter for you to settle down at Goring
+Abbey,’ said Daphne, assuming her most practical tone. ‘You will not be
+tormented by the idea of all the lovely spots of earth, the wonderful
+rivers and forests and mountains which you have not seen, as Edgar and
+I must be at dear old Hawksyard. But we mean to travel immensely, do we
+not, Edgar?’
+
+Another distinct allusion to her coming life, the near approaching
+time when she and Edgar would be one. The Squire of Hawksyard smiled
+delightedly at this recognition of the bond.
+
+‘I am sure to do whatever you wish, and go wherever you like,’ he
+answered; ‘but I am tremendously fond of home, one’s own fireside,
+don’t you know, and one’s own stable.’
+
+‘And one’s own china-closet, and one’s own linen-presses,’ added
+Daphne, laughing; ‘and one’s own jams and pickles and raspberry
+vinegar. Are not those things numbered among the delights of Hawksyard?
+But I mean you to take me to the Amazon, and when we have thoroughly
+done the Andes, we’ll go over the Isthmus of Panama, and across Mexico,
+and finish up with the Rockies. They are only a continuation of the
+same range, don’t you know, the backbone of the two Americas.’
+
+Edgar laughed as at an agreeable joke.
+
+‘But I mean it,’ protested Daphne, with her elbow resting on the ledge
+of the window, and her eyes devouring the Jungfrau. ‘We are going to be
+a second Mr. and Mrs. Brassey in the way of travelling.’
+
+Mr. Turchill looked somewhat uncomfortable, moved by the thought of a
+hunting-stable running to seed, at home, while he, a wretched sailor at
+the best of times, lay tossing in some southern archipelago, all among
+dusky islanders, and reduced to a fishy and vegetable diet. If Daphne
+were in earnest the sacrifice would have to be made. Upon that point
+he was certain. Never could he resist that capricious creature; never
+could he deny her a pleasure, or beat down her airy whims with the
+sledge-hammer of common sense.
+
+‘I believe we shall be one of the most foolish couples in Christendom,’
+he said aloud; ‘but I think we shall be one of the happiest.’
+
+‘A girl must be very hard-hearted who could not be happy with you,
+Edgar,’ said Madoline, looking at him with a frank sisterly smile. ‘You
+are so thoroughly good and kind.’
+
+‘Ah, but goodness and kindness don’t always score, you know,’ he
+replied, with a laugh in which there was just a shade of sadness.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+‘LOVE IS NOT OLD, AS WHAN THAT IT IS NEW.’
+
+
+Sir Vernon’s party had sailed over the smiling waters of Thun, with its
+villa-dotted shores, and its low amphitheatre of pastoral hills which
+form the foreground to the sublimer mountain-land. They and all their
+belongings had been carried into Interlaken by the funny little railway
+across the Bodelei, that fertile garden-ground between two lakes, which
+has such an obvious air of having begun life under water. They had seen
+the long rank of prosperous-looking omnibuses waiting for travellers,
+and in one of those vehicles they had been carried away from the
+walnut-tree boulevard, and all the gaiety and fashion of Interlaken,
+to a rustic road ascending the hill towards the pine-woods, and the
+mountain peaks far away beyond them, piled up against the sky.
+
+Here at the Jungfraublich they found a charming suite of rooms prepared
+for them; rooms not gorgeously furnished or richly ornamented, but
+with long French windows which looked upon as fair a landscape as the
+eye of man could desire to behold. There rose the Jungfrau in her
+sublime beauty, above the fertile valley with its lakes and meadows,
+its _châlets_ and gardens, orchards and _bosquets_; all the simplicity
+and prettiness of Nature on a small scale lying at the feet of the
+immensities.
+
+It was twilight when they arrived, and the first star of evening, a
+faint luminous spot in the blue gray, hovered over the snowy pinnacle
+of the mountain.
+
+‘Oh, you dear!’ cried Daphne, to the mountain and not to the star;
+‘you will be a part of my life from this night. How shall I ever live
+without you when I go back to Warwickshire?’
+
+‘You will have to console yourself with an occasional glimpse of the
+Wrekin or the Cotswolds,’ said Madoline, laughing.
+
+‘I am almost sorry I ever came to Switzerland,’ murmured Daphne,
+turning away from the open window with a sigh, when she had gazed, and
+gazed, as if she would fain have made herself a part of the thing she
+looked at.
+
+‘Why, dearest?’ asked Lina.
+
+‘Because I shall be always longing to come back here. I shall never be
+able to tolerate the eternal flatness of home—mole-hills instead of
+mountains.’
+
+‘Hawksyard is rather flat, I admit,’ said Edgar, apologetically;
+‘but it is remarkably well drained. There isn’t a healthier house in
+England.’
+
+‘Will not all their modern aestheticism—their Queen Anne worship; their
+straight garden walks, and straight-backed chairs; their everlasting
+tea-trays, and Japanese screens, and sunflowers, and dadoes—sicken
+you after this mountain-land?’ cried Daphne. ‘Such a narrow, petty,
+childish idea of beauty! Have these perpendicular people ever seen the
+Jungfrau, do you suppose?’
+
+‘Seen her, and outlived her, and ascended to a higher empyrean of art,’
+answered Gerald. ‘You poor child, do you know that you are going into
+raptures about things which a well-bred person would hardly deign to
+mention, any more than a Pytchley man would stoop to talk about the
+Brighton Harriers? This is cockney Switzerland, as cockney as the
+Trossachs, or Killarney, as Ramsgate and Margate. Everybody knows the
+Jungfrau, at least by sight; everybody has been at Interlaken. It is
+the chief rendezvous of the travellers who come in flocks, and are
+driven from pillar to post like sheep, with an intelligent interpreter
+playing the part of sheep-dog. I hope you will do the Matterhorn and
+Monte Rosa before you go home; and then you will be acquainted with a
+brace of mountains which may be spoken about in polite society.’
+
+‘The Jungfrau is good enough for me,’ answered Daphne; ‘I shall never
+behold anything more beautiful. Manfred loved her.’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, that amiable gentleman did not love anything. “And
+you, ye mountains,” he exclaims, “why are ye beautiful? I cannot
+love ye.” He does not care for the sun, nor for his fellow-men, nor
+for his own life. He has all the misanthropy of Hamlet, without
+Hamlet’s unselfish reasons for being misanthropic. However, I suppose
+to young ladies in their teens he will always appear an interesting
+character. No doubt you will be starting with your alpenstock at
+daybreak to-morrow in search of the Witch of the Alps. You will most
+likely discover her by one of the bridges on the road to Grindelwald,
+offering dirty bunches of edelweiss, or indifferently fresh milk, to
+the passers-by.’
+
+‘Daphne is going nowhere without me,’ said Lina, laying her hand
+caressingly upon her sister’s shoulder. ‘She is too enthusiastic to be
+trusted in strange places. You will not go anywhere alone, will you,
+darling?’
+
+‘I will do nothing in this world to vex you,’ answered Daphne
+earnestly, with the straightest, clearest look in her lovely eyes.
+
+Gerald Goring heard her tone, and saw that direct and truthful gaze.
+He knew well how much that little speech meant; how grave and complete
+was the promise in those few words. Yes, she would be true, she would
+be faithful: were it at the cost of two broken hearts. He began to
+perceive that he had underrated the moral force of this seemingly
+volatile creature; physically so fragile, so made up of whims and
+fancies, yet, where honour and affection were concerned, so staunch.
+
+Later in the evening, after they had dined, and Sir Vernon had retired
+for the night, Mr. Goring loitered alone in the terraced garden of the
+hotel. The mountain, faintly touched with silvery light from a young
+moon, rose in front of him, and below glimmered those earthlier lights
+which told of human life—yellow candle-light in wooden _châlets_; the
+flare of the gas yonder, faint in the distance, where the walnut-tree
+walk was all alive with the light of its hotels and its modest Kursaal.
+A fitful gust of music from the band came floating up the valley.
+Behind him the hotel stood out whitely against a background of dark
+pine-woods; lights in many windows. Those ten lighted windows in a row
+on the first storey belonged to Sir Vernon’s apartments. He looked
+up, vaguely wondering which was Daphne’s window. That one, at the end
+of the range, most likely—the casement wide open to the night and the
+mystic mountain-land. While he was deciding this a white-robed figure
+stepped lightly out upon the balcony, and stood there, gazing at the
+far-away peaks faintly outlined against a purple sky.
+
+There were three or four other loungers upon the terrace, each with
+his cigar, the luminous point of which gleamed here and there among
+the bushes like a glowworm. There was no reason why Daphne should
+distinguish Gerald Goring from the rest, as he sat in an angle of the
+stone balustrade, half hidden in the shadow of an acacia, lonely,
+dissatisfied; yet it was painful to him, in his egotism, to see her
+standing there, immovable, a lovely statuesque form, with upturned face
+and clasped hands, worshipping the blind, dumb, unresponsive goddess
+Nature, and all unconscious that he, her lover, with a human heart to
+feel and to suffer, was looking up at her with passionate yearning from
+the dewy darkness below.
+
+‘She does not care a jot for me; she is harder than the nether
+millstone,’ he said to himself savagely. ‘Yet I once thought her the
+softest, most yielding thing in creation—a being so impressionable that
+she might be moulded by a thought of mine. I feared the touching of our
+spirits, as if I were flame and she tinder. Yet our souls have touched,
+and kindled, and burst into a blaze; and she has strength of mind to
+pluck herself away unscathed, not a feather of her purity scorched,
+from that fiery contact.’
+
+He sat in his shadowy corner, lazily finishing his cigar, and looking
+up at the figure in the balcony till it slowly melted from his gaze,
+and a muslin curtain was dropped across the open window. Then he left
+the garden and wandered away up the wooded hillside, by narrow winding
+paths, which seemed to have no particular direction, but to have been
+worn by the footprints of other idlers as purposeless—it might be as
+unhappy—as he. He stayed in the shadowy wood for a long time, smoking a
+second cigar, and preferring that perfumed solitude, and his own gloomy
+thoughts to any diversion which the little lighted town down in the
+green hollow yonder could have furnished him. And then, at last, on the
+verge of midnight, when all the lighted windows of the Jungfraublich
+had gone out one after another, and the big white barrack looked blank
+and bare, he turned and groped his way back to it through the sinuous
+woodland paths, and was admitted by a sleepy porter, who was mildly
+reproachful at having been kept up so long.
+
+A grand excursion had been planned for the next day, Sir Vernon
+approving the scheme, and politely requesting to be left out of it.
+
+‘You wouldn’t know what to do with me,’ he said. ‘I should be a burden
+to you, and I should be terribly tiresome to myself. I have letters to
+write which will occupy me all the morning, and in the afternoon I can
+stroll down to the Kursaal, or sit in the garden here, or take a little
+walk in the wood. You will be back before nine o’clock, I daresay.’
+
+Madoline was loth to leave her father for so long a day. He was an
+invalid, and required a good deal of attention, she reminded him.
+
+‘There is Jinman, my dear; he can do all I want. Of course it is much
+pleasanter for me to be waited on by you; but Jinman is very handy, and
+will serve on a pinch.’
+
+‘But all those letters, dear father,’ urged Lina, looking at an
+alarming bundle of businesslike documents. ‘Could I not help you with
+those? Could not the greater part of them stand over till we are at
+Montreux?’
+
+‘Some of them might, perhaps; but some must be answered to-day. Don’t
+worry yourself about me, Lina; I know you have set your heart upon
+going up to Müren with Daphne.’
+
+‘I should like to show her the scenery which delighted me so years
+ago,’ answered Lina; ‘but I can’t bear the idea of leaving you for so
+long.’
+
+‘My dear child, you are talking nonsense,’ said Sir Vernon testily. ‘In
+October you are going to leave me altogether.’
+
+‘Yes; but I shall not be leaving you in a strange hotel; and I shall be
+so near, at your beck and call, always.’
+
+Sir Vernon, having made up his mind to the sacrifice, carried it out
+with consistent fortitude. He himself ordered the carriage which was
+to carry off his beloved daughter, with those other three who were
+comparatively indifferent to him.
+
+They drove away from the hotel immediately after a seven o’clock
+breakfast, in the clear light of morning, while the fields and hedges
+were still dewy, and the earth wore her fairest freshest colours and
+breathed out her sweetest odours. Soon after they left the village they
+came to the road beside the deep and rapid Lutschine, which cleaves the
+heart of the valley. On either side rose a lofty wall of hills, slope
+above slope, climbing up to heaven, clothed to the very summit with
+tall feathery firs, some of stupendous size, the sombre tints of these
+patriarchs relieved by the tender green of the young larches; the White
+Lutschine rushing on all the while, a wild romantic stream, tumbling
+and seething over masses of stone. Here by the river bank they stopped
+to see the murder-stone, an inscription cut on the face of the rock,
+which tells how at this spot a brother slew his brother.
+
+It is a lovely drive, so lovely that it is hardly possible for the
+mind to be distracted from its fairness by any other thought. Daphne
+sat silent in her corner of the carriage, drinking in the beauty of
+the scene, her gaze wandering upward and upward to those mighty hills,
+those forests upon the edge of heaven, so remote, so inaccessible in
+their loveliness, the greenery pierced every here and there by narrow
+streamlets that came trickling down like wandering flashes of silvery
+light. Solitude and silence were the prevailing expression of that
+exquisite scene. The cattle had all been removed to the upper regions,
+to remote pastures on the borderland of the everlasting snow-fields; of
+human life there were few signs; only a distant _châlet_ showing here
+and there, perched on some ledge of the green hills. The voice of the
+river was the one sound that broke the summer stillness.
+
+There was a pleasant contrast to this solemn loneliness, this silent
+loveliness of Nature without humanity, when the carriage drove
+jingling up to the inn at Lauterbrunnen, where there was all the life
+and bustle of a country inn at fair-time or market. Many vehicles
+and horses in the open space in front of the house; a long verandah,
+under which travellers were sitting resting after an early morning
+tramp from Mürren or Grindelwald; guides, with swarthy sunburnt faces,
+homely, good-natured, unintelligent, sitting at ease upon a long stone
+parapet, waiting their chances; a great fuss and noise of taking
+horses in and bringing horses out; a call for hay and water; a few
+people strolling down the road to look at the Staubach, and telling
+each other admiringly, inspired by the prophet Baedeker, that it is
+the highest unbroken fall in the world. It was very glorious in the
+morning sunshine, a dim rainbow-tinted arc of spray; and Daphne thought
+of the Witch of the Alps, and how she had worn this cloudlike fall as
+a garment, when she showed herself to Manfred. There was no inn there
+in those far-away romantic days—no odour of bad brandy and worse wine;
+no tourists; no cockneyism of any kind—only the sweet pastoral valley
+in its lonely beauty, and the solemn regions of mountain and snow
+rising whitely above its placid greenery, and walling it in from the
+commonplace earth.
+
+There was a halt of half an hour or so at Lauterbrunnen, just long
+enough to pay proper homage to the Staubach, and to explore the queer
+little primitive village, and for Daphne to burden herself with a
+number of souvenirs, all more or less of a staggy or goaty order,
+bargaining sturdily for the same with the sunburnt proprietor of a
+covered stall opposite the inn, whose honesty in no case demanded
+more than thrice the amount he was prepared to accept. By the time
+Daphne had concluded her transactions with this merchant of mountain
+_bric-à-brac_, and had made herself spiky with paper-knives and
+walking-sticks of the horny kind—which treasures she reluctantly
+surrendered to the safe keeping of an inn servant, to be packed in the
+carriage against her return—the steeds were ready to convey the two
+ladies up the mountain-path, the gentlemen being bent upon going up on
+foot. Daphne wanted to walk, and had just bought herself an alpenstock
+with that view, but Lina would not let her undertake the journey; so
+she handed Edgar her alpenstock, and allowed herself to be hoisted
+into a queer kind of saddle, with a railing round it, and Lina being
+similarly mounted, they began the ascent, going through more mud, just
+at starting, than seemed compatible with such perfect summer weather.
+
+‘I hope, Edgar,’ said Daphne gravely, ‘that you won’t take your idea of
+my horsemanship from my performance on this animal, and in this saddle,
+or else I am afraid you’ll never let me ride Black Pearl.’
+
+Edgar laughingly assured her that her seat was perfection, even in the
+railed-in saddle, and that she should have the best horse money could
+buy, or judgment secure.
+
+The two young men went on before them, leaping from stone to stone, and
+making great play with their alpenstocks as they bounded across the
+streamlets which frequently intersected their path. It was a narrow,
+narrow way, winding up the shoulder of the hill, now in sunlight, now
+in shade; the summer air sweetened with the scent of the pine-trees;
+pine-clad slopes above, pine-clad slopes below, sometimes gently
+slanting downward, a green hillside which little children might play
+upon, sometimes a sheer descent, terrible to the eye; _châlets_ dotting
+the meadows far below; villages spread out on the greensward of the
+valley, and looking like clusters of toy houses; the road winding
+through the valley like a silver ribbon; the awful Jungfrau range
+facing them, as they ascended, in all its unspeakable majesty; grander,
+and yet ever grander, as they came nearer to it.
+
+Sometimes, as they rode through the pine-trees, they seemed to be
+riding straight into the snowy mountains; they were so close, so close
+to that white majesty. Then as they came suddenly into the open, those
+airy peaks receded, remote as ever, melting farther and farther away as
+one rode after them, like a never-to-be-reached fairyland.
+
+‘I could almost cry with vexation,’ exclaimed Daphne after one of these
+optical illusions. ‘I thought we were close to the Jungfrau, and there
+she stands smiling down at me, with her pallid enigmatical smile, from
+the very top of the world. Edgar, if you love me, you must take me up
+that impertinent mountain before I am year older.’
+
+‘You were talking yesterday of the Cordilleras.’
+
+‘I know, but we must finish off the Alps first—Mont Blanc, and
+the Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Rothhorn, the Matterhorn, the
+Finsteraarhorn, and all the rest of them. I cannot be defied by the
+insolence of Nature. She has thrown her gauntlet, and I must positively
+pick it up. If the mountain won’t come to Mahomet—and the general
+experience seems to show that mountains are obstinate things—Mahomet
+must go to the mountain. I mean to have it out with Mont Blanc before I
+die.’
+
+‘I don’t believe a lady has ever done the ascent,’ said Edgar, leading
+his mistress’s meek and patient steed along a winding ledge. The animal
+was a mere infant, rising three, but as free from skittishness as if he
+had been rising three-and-twenty.
+
+‘That shows how densely ignorant you must be of the age you live in,’
+protested Daphne. ‘Be sure that there is nothing in this life which the
+man of the present can do which the woman of the present won’t imitate;
+and the more essentially masculine the thing is the more certain she is
+to attempt it.’
+
+‘But I hope you don’t rank yourself among masculine women, Daphne,’
+murmured Edgar, drawing protectingly near her, as they turned a sharp
+corner.
+
+‘I don’t; but I mean to ascend Mont Blanc.’
+
+They were approaching the village on the height. The Lauterbrunnen
+valley was sinking deeper and deeper into remoteness, a mere green
+cleft in the mountains. They had met and passed many people on
+their way: ladies being carried down by sturdy natives in a kind of
+sedan-chair, something of the palki species; voyagers struggling
+upwards with their belongings, with a view to spending some days in the
+quiet settlement among the snow-peaks; guides jogging by with somebody
+else’s luggage; mules laden with provisions. The guides gave each
+other a grinning good-day as they passed, and exchanged remarks in a
+_patois_ not very easy to understand; remarks that had a suggestion of
+being critical, and not altogether commendatory, of the clients at that
+moment under escort.
+
+‘Here we are, up in the skies at last,’ cried Daphne, as she sprang
+lightly to the ground, spurning her lover’s proffered aid, and just
+brushing against the eager arms held out to receive her; ‘and oh how
+dreadfully far away the top of the Jungfrau still is, and how very
+dirty she looks now we are on a level with her shoulder!’
+
+‘It is too late in the year for you to see her in her virginal purity.
+A good deal of the snow has melted,’ said Madoline apologetically.
+
+‘But it ought not to melt. I thought I was coming to a region of
+eternal snow. Why, the lower peaks are horribly streaky and brown.
+Thank Heaven the Silberhorn still looks dazzlingly white. And is this
+Mürren? A real mountain village? How I wish we were going to live here
+for a month.’
+
+‘I fancy you would get horribly tired of it,’ suggested Gerald Goring.
+
+She did not stay to argue the point, but ordered Edgar to explore the
+village with her immediately. The big wooden barrack of an hotel,
+with its bright green blinds and pine balconies, looked down upon
+her, the commonplace type of an advanced civilisation. Young men,
+all affecting a more or less Alpine-Clubbish air, lounged about in
+various easy attitudes; young women, in every variety of hat and gauze
+veil, read Tauchnitz novels, or made believe to be sketching, under
+artistic-looking umbrellas. Daphne made but a cursory survey of this
+tourist population before she started off upon her voyage of discovery,
+with Edgar in delighted attendance on her steps. Madoline and Gerald,
+who both knew all that there was to be known about Mürren, were content
+to loiter in the garden of the Hôtel des Alpes, dreamily contemplative
+of the sublimities around and about them.
+
+‘I give you half an hour for your explorations,’ said Gerald, as Daphne
+and her swain departed; ‘if you are not back by that time, Lina and I
+will eat all the luncheon. At this elevation luncheon is not a matter
+to be trifled with. There are limits to the supplies.’
+
+He went into the hotel to give his orders, while Lina walked slowly up
+and down one of the terraced pathways, looking at the wild chaos of
+glacier and rock before her, looking, yet seeing but little of that
+chilly grandeur, caring but little for its origin or its history, with
+sad eyes turned inward, vaguely contemplating a vague sorrow.
+
+It was not a grief of yesterday’s date—it was a sorrow made up of
+doubts and anxieties which had their beginning in Gerald Goring’s
+letter telling her of his intended trip to Canada. From that hour to
+this she had perceived a gradual change in him. His letters from the
+Western world, kind and affectionate as they had been, were altogether
+different from the letters he had written to her in former years. When
+he came back the man himself seemed different. He was not less kind, or
+less attentive, less eager to gratify and to anticipate her wishes. To
+her, and in all his relations with her, he was faultless: but he was
+changed. Something had gone out of him—life, spirit, soul, the flame
+which makes the lamp glorious and beautiful; something was faded and
+dead in him; leaving the man himself a gentlemanly piece of mechanism,
+like one of those victims to anatomical experiment from whose living
+body the brain, or some particular portion of the brain, has been
+abstracted, and which mechanically performs and repeats the same
+actions with a hideous soulless monotony. ‘Was it that he loved her
+less? Was it that he had ceased to love her?’ she had asked herself,
+recoiling with shuddering heart-sickness from the thought; as if she
+had found herself suddenly on the verge of some horrible abyss, and
+seen inevitable ruin and death below. No, she told herself, judging his
+heart by her own. A love that had grown as theirs had grown, side by
+side with the gradual growth of mind and body, a love interwoven with
+every memory and every hope, was not of the kind to change unawares
+to indifference. She was perfectly free from the taint of vanity;
+but she knew that she was worthy of her lover’s love. She, who had
+been her father’s idol, the object of respect and consideration from
+all about her, was accustomed to the idea of being beloved. She had
+been told too often of her beauty not to know that she was handsomer
+than the majority of women. She knew that in mental power she was her
+lover’s equal: by birth, by fortune, by every attribute and quality,
+she was fitted to be his wife, to rule over his household, and to be a
+purifying and elevating influence in his life. His mother had loved her
+as warmly as it was possible for that languid nature to love anything.
+Their two lives were interwoven by the tenderest associations of
+the past as well as by the solemn engagement which bound them in the
+present. No, it was not possible for Madoline, seeing all things from
+the standpoint of her own calm and evenly-balanced mind, to imagine
+infidelity in a lover so long and so closely bound to her. Those sudden
+aberrations of the human mind which wreck so many lives, for which no
+looker-on can account, and which make men and women a world’s wonder,
+had never come within the range of her experience.
+
+Rejecting the idea of inconstancy, Madoline was compelled to find some
+other reason for the indefinable change which had slowly been revealed
+to her since Gerald’s last home-coming. What could it be except the
+languor of ill-health, or, perhaps, the terrible satiety of a life
+which had so few duties, and so many indulgences, a life that called
+for no effort of mind, for not one act of self-denial?
+
+‘Every man ought to have a career,’ she said to herself. ‘My poor
+Gerald has none; no ambition; nothing to hope for, or work for,
+or build upon. The new days of his life bring him nothing but old
+pleasures. He is getting weary and worn out in the very morning of
+existence. What will he be when the day begins to wane?’
+
+She had been thinking of these things for a long time, and had
+determined upon opening her mind to her lover, seriously, candidly,
+without reserve, with all the outspoken freedom of one who deemed
+herself a part of his life, his second self.
+
+Here, in the face of these solemn heights, which seem ever typical of
+the loftier aims of life—all the more so, perhaps, because of that air
+of unattainableness which pervades them—she felt as if they were more
+alone, farther from all the sordid considerations of worldly wisdom
+than in the valley below. She could speak to him here from her heart of
+hearts.
+
+He was walking by her side along one of the narrow paths, just where a
+rustic fence separated the grounds of the hotel from the steep mountain
+side—walking somewhat listlessly, lost in a dreamy silence—when she put
+her arm gently through his and drew a little nearer to him.
+
+‘Gerald dearest, I want to talk to you—seriously.’
+
+He turned suddenly, and looked at her, with more of alarm in his
+countenance than she had anticipated.
+
+‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘I am not going to
+be severe. I am only anxious.’
+
+‘Anxious about what?’
+
+‘About you, dear love; about your health, mental and physical. You
+remember what you told me before you went to Canada.’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Your trip did you good, did it not?’
+
+‘Worlds of good. I came home a whole man.’
+
+‘But since you came home the old feeling of languor has returned, has
+it not? You take so little interest in life; you look at everything
+with such a weary indifferent air.’
+
+‘My dearest, do you expect me to go into raptures with the beaten
+tracks and cockney lions of Switzerland, as poor little Daphne does?
+There is not a yard of the ground we have been passing over that I
+do not know by heart—that I have not seen under every condition of
+atmosphere, and in every variety of circumstances. You forget how
+many months of my life I wasted in balancing myself upon razor-edged
+_arrêtes_, and hewing my way up perpendicular peaks with an ice-axe. I
+cannot gush about these dear old familiar mountains, or fall into an
+ecstasy because the lakes are bluer and broader than our Avon.’
+
+‘I don’t expect you to be ecstatic, dear; I only want to know that
+you are happy, and that you take a healthy interest in life. I have
+been thinking lately that a man in your position ought to have a
+public career. Without public duties the life of a very rich man must
+inevitably be idle, since all his private duties are done by other
+people. And an idle life never yet was a happy one.’
+
+‘Spoken like a copy-book, my dearest,’ answered Gerald lightly. ‘Well,
+I own I have led an idle life hitherto, but some of it has been rather
+laborious idleness; as when I accomplished the passage of the Roththal
+Sattel and ascended yonder Jungfrau between sunrise and sundown; or
+when I came as near death as a man can come, and yet escape it, while
+climbing the Pointe des Ecrins, in the French Alps.’
+
+‘I want you by-and-by to think of another kind of labour, Gerald,’
+said Lina, with tender seriousness. ‘I want you to think of doing good
+to your fellow-men—you, who are so gifted, and who have the means of
+carrying out every benevolent intention. I want you to be useful in
+your generation, and to win for yourself one of those great enduring
+names which are only won by usefulness.’
+
+‘Come now, my sweetest monitor, there you shoot beyond the mark. Surely
+Virgil and Horace, Dante and Shakespeare, have won names of wider glory
+than all the useful men who ever lived. That idea of usefulness has
+never had much charm for me. I have not a practical mind. I take after
+my mother, who was one of the lilies of the field, rather than after my
+father, who belonged to the toilers and spinners. If I had discovered
+in my nature any vein of the gold of poetry, I would have been willing
+to dig hard for that immortal ore; but as I can’t be a poet, I don’t
+care to be anything else.’
+
+‘And with your talents and your wealth you con be content to be
+nothing?’ exclaimed Lina, deeply shocked.
+
+‘Nothing, except a tolerably indulgent landlord, a patron
+of the fine arts, on a small scale, and by-and-by, if you
+please—your—obedient—husband.’
+
+The last words came somewhat slowly.
+
+‘If you are happy, I am content,’ said Lina, with a sigh; ‘but it is
+because I fancy you are not happy that I urge you to lead a more active
+life, to give yourself greater variety of thought and occupation.’
+
+‘And do you think that, if I were unhappy, the wear and fret of public
+life, the dealing with workers whose chief object seems to be to
+frustrate and stultify each other’s efforts; to be continually baulked
+and disappointed; to have my most generous impulses ridiculed, my
+loftiest hopes cried down as the dreams of a madman; perhaps, at the
+close of my career, after I had given my days and nights, my brain
+and body, to the public cause, to be denounced as an incendiary and a
+lunatic—do you think a career of that kind would ensure happiness? No,
+love, Providence, in its divine wisdom, has allowed me to belong to
+the lotus-eating class. Let me nibble my lotus, and lie at ease in my
+sunshiny valley, and be content to let others enjoy the rapture of the
+fray.’
+
+‘If I could be sure that you were happy,’ faltered Lina, feeling very
+unhappy herself.
+
+‘Ought I not to be happy, when you are so good to me?’ he asked, taking
+her hand and pressing it tenderly, with very real affection, but an
+affection chastened by remorse. ‘I am as happy as a man can be who has
+inherited a natural bent to melancholy. My mother was not a cheerful
+woman, as you know.’
+
+This was an undeniable fact. Lady Geraldine, after having made what
+some people called a splendid marriage, and others a _mésalliance_,
+had gone through life with an air of subdued melancholy, an elegant
+pensiveness which suited her languid beauty as well as the colours
+she chose for her gowns, or the flowers she wore in her hair. She
+had borne herself with infinite grace, as one whose cup of life was
+tinctured with sorrow, beneath the snowy calm of whose bosom the slow
+consuming fire of grief was working its gradual ravages. She died of an
+altogether commonplace disease, but she contrived so to bear herself
+in her decay, that when she was dead everybody was convinced she had
+perished slowly of a broken heart, and that she had never smiled after
+her marriage with Mr. Giles-Goring. This was society’s verdict upon a
+woman who had lived an utterly selfish and self-indulgent life, and who
+had spent fifteen hundred a-year upon her milliner.
+
+Lina and Gerald strolled up and down for a little while, almost
+in silence. She had said her say, and nothing had come of it. Her
+disappointment was bitter; for she had fancied that it needed but a
+few words from her to kindle the smouldering fires of ambition. She
+had supposed that every man was ambitious, however he might allow his
+aspirations to be choked by the thorns of this world: and here she had
+found in the lover of her choice a man without the faintest desire
+to achieve greatness, or to do good in his generation. Had he been
+such a man as Edgar Turchill, she would have felt no surprise at his
+indifference to the wider questions of life. Edgar was a man born to do
+his duty in a narrow groove; a large-hearted, simple-minded creature,
+but little removed from the peasant who tills the fields, and whose
+desires and hopes are shut in by the narrow circle of village life. But
+Gerald Goring—Gerald, whose ardent boyhood, whose passion for all the
+loftier delights of life, had lifted him so high above the common ruck
+of mankind—to find him at nine-and-twenty a languid pessimist, willing
+to live a life as selfish and as useless as his mother had led before
+him: this was indeed hard. And it was harder still for Madoline to
+discover how much she had overrated her influence upon him. A few years
+ago a word from her had been sufficient to urge him to any effort, to
+give bent and purpose to his mind; but a few years ago he had been
+still warm with the flush and fire of early youth.
+
+Daphne and Edgar joined them presently, both warm and breathless after
+a small experiment in the climbing way.
+
+‘We have seen everything, and we have been up a mountain,’ exclaimed
+Daphne. ‘It is the funniest little village—a handful of wooden cottages
+perched on a narrow track straggling along anyhow on the very edge of
+the hill; a little new church that looks as if it had dropped from the
+clouds; a morsel of a post-office; a stack of wood beside every house;
+and a bundle of green vegetables hanging to dry in every porch and
+balcony. Poor people, do they live upon dried vegetables, I wonder? We
+found an English lady and her son sitting in the middle of the road—if
+you can call it a road—sketching a native boy. He was a very handsome
+boy, and sat as still as a statue. We stood ever so long and watched
+the two artists; and then we had a climb; and Edgar says I am a good
+climber. Do you think,’ coaxingly to Lina, ‘we might try the Silberhorn
+after luncheon?’
+
+They lunched in a sunny airy corner of the big bare _salle-à-manger_
+merrily enough, or with that seeming gaiety of heart which brightens
+so many a board, notwithstanding that the stream flows darkly enough
+below the ripple and the gleam. Daphne had made it the business of her
+life to seem happy and at ease ever since that fatal night at Fribourg.
+She wanted Gerald Goring to believe that she was satisfied with her
+lot—nay, even that she was honestly attached to her plighted husband,
+and that her conduct that night had been but a truant impulse, a
+momentary aberration from common sense and duty. She was fighting her
+battle bravely, sometimes smiling with an aching heart, sometimes
+really succeeding in being happy, with the inconsiderate unreasoning
+happiness of youth and health, and the rapture of living in a world
+where all was alike new and beautiful. After luncheon she went out with
+Edgar for another ramble, until it should be time to begin the descent
+to Lauterbrunnen. They had all agreed to walk down, in a leisurely
+way, after tea; and the horses had already gone back with the two men
+who had led them up. Daphne wanted to learn where and how she could
+get nearest to the mountains. It seemed provoking to see them there,
+so near, and yet as far beyond her reach as if she had been looking at
+them from her window at Interlaken.
+
+‘Would it really be too much for an afternoon walk?’ she asked, gazing
+longingly at the Silberhorn.
+
+Gerald explained the preparations and the assistance, and the length of
+time which would be required for any attempt upon that snowy crest.
+
+‘Please show me the very ledge where the child’s red frock used to be
+seen,’ she asked, perusing the wilderness of crag and peak.
+
+‘What child? what frock?’ asked Edgar.
+
+‘Don’t you know that ever so many years ago a lammergeier carried
+off a child from this village of Mürren, and alighted with it upon
+an inaccessible shelf of rock on the side of the Jungfrau, and that
+for years afterwards some red scraps, the remnants of the poor baby’s
+clothes, were seen amongst the snow?’
+
+‘A pitiful story, wherever you found it,’ said Gerald; ‘but I think the
+baby’s frock would have been blown away or buried under the snow before
+the vulture had forgotten the flavour of the baby.’
+
+And then, seeing that Daphne hungered for any information about yonder
+mountain, he condescended to tell her how he and a couple of friends,
+allied by the climbing propensity rather than by ancient friendship,
+had ascended the north face of the Silberhorn, with the idea of finding
+a direct route over its summit to the top of the Jungfrau; how after
+ten hours of very hard work they had planted their feet on the top of
+the dazzling peak, only to find the snow falling thickly round them,
+and the Jungfrau and the Giessen glacier already hidden behind a fleecy
+cloud; how, after waiting in vain for the storm to pass, they had made
+a perilous descent to the upper plateau of the Giessen glacier; and
+how there, amidst thick clouds and driving snow, they groped their way
+round the edges of huge crevasses before they hit on a practical path
+descending the ice-fall; and how, finding the night closing in upon
+them, they were fain to sit upon a ledge of rock under a sheltering
+cliff till daybreak.
+
+‘Poor things!’ exclaimed Daphne with infinite compassion; ‘and you
+never reached the top of the Jungfrau after all.’
+
+‘Not by that way. I have scaled her granite point from the Roththal
+Sattel.’
+
+‘And is it very lovely up there?’
+
+‘_C’est selon._ When I mounted, the Maiden was wrapped in cloud, and
+there was no distant view, nor could we spare more than a quarter of an
+hour for rest on the summit; but we saw an avalanche or two on our way,
+and altogether we had a very good time.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+‘I MEANE WELL, BY GOD THAT SIT ABOVE.’
+
+
+It was pleasant to drink tea at a little table in the garden of the
+inn, with the white mountain world spread before them in all its glory,
+flushed with the golden lights of afternoon. Edgar looked ineffably
+happy as he sat sipping his tea and watching Daphne eat bread and
+honey, which seemed her chief nutriment in this part of the world; for
+Swiss poultry and Swiss veal, for all the varieties of _vol-au-vent_,
+_fricandeau_, _ris de veau_, and _fricassée_, under which the
+inevitable calf disguised himself, she showed herself absolutely
+indifferent; but she had an infinite capacity for Swiss rolls and Swiss
+honey.
+
+While they were sitting at tea, resting before they began the downward
+walk, Mr. Turchill produced a letter which that morning’s post had
+brought him from his mother: one of those worthy commonplace letters
+which set one’s teeth on edge when read aloud amidst the loftiest
+aspects of nature. But Edgar saw nothing beyond the love and the
+kindness in his mother’s epistle, and would have read it on the summit
+of Caucasus, yea, on that topmost untrodden snow-peak which the
+Persians call the Holy Mountain, and would have perceived no discord
+between the letter and the scene.
+
+‘The dear mother’s letter is full of you, Daphne,’ he said; ‘would it
+bore you and Mr. Goring if I were to read a little of it, Lina?’
+
+Mr. Goring protested, with a stifled yawn, that he would be delighted.
+‘There is nothing,’ he asserted, ‘more interesting than domestic
+correspondence. Look at the Paston letters, for instance. And I
+could fancy your mother writing quite in the Paston style,’ he added
+graciously.
+
+Edgar unfolded the thin, closely written sheet, written in those neat,
+sloping characters which had been drilled into all the young ladies
+at Miss Tompion’s academy, and crossed—for the habit of crossing a
+letter had obtained in Mrs. Turchill’s youth, and she returned to
+it instinctively under stress of foreign postage, albeit twopence
+halfpenny is not a ruinous amount to pay for a letter.
+
+‘“I am pleased to hear that Daphne is enjoying herself, and that she
+is so enthusiastic about the scenery. I remember, when I learned
+drawing at Miss Tompion’s, doing a very pretty sketch of Chamounix,
+with Mont Blanc in the background, in black and white chalks on tinted
+paper. I believe some of the snow was scratched in with a penknife
+by Signor Pasticcio, but all the rest was my very own, and papa gave
+me a sovereign when the drawing was sent home. It used to hang in
+your father’s dressing-room, but one of the housemaids contrived to
+break the glass one day with her broom-handle, and I did not care
+to go to the expense of having it reglazed: Gilbert is so dear for
+all jobs of that kind. I have always understood that the Jungfrau is
+very inferior to Mont Blanc; but as you say Byron admired it I have
+no doubt it is very beautiful, though, of course, in a minor degree.
+Every geography will tell you that Mont Blanc is the higher. I hope you
+are careful to avoid wet feet”—hum—hum—hum,’ mumbled Edgar, skipping
+the tender mother’s injunctions about his care of his health, and
+hurrying on to that part of the letter which related to Daphne. ‘Oh,
+here it is. “Tell Daphne, with my love, that I am going carefully over
+all the house-linen—weeding out all the sheets that are weak in the
+middle”—dear old mother! she always will go into details—“and making a
+large addition to the table-linen. I have also had a new inventory made
+in duplicate. I know that the modern idea is for the bride to provide
+the house-linen. That is all very well when the husband is a young
+man who has his own way to make in the world, but not for my boy, who
+has a home of his own—a fine old house which his ancestors have lived
+in, and spent their money upon, from generation to generation. I hope
+Daphne will be as fond of the old Hawksyard glass and china—which, as
+she knows, is the collection of more than a century—as she is of the
+mountains; but I’m afraid the romantic kind of temperament which goes
+into raptures with mountains is hardly the disposition which could take
+delight in housekeeping, and the many details of home-life.”’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+‘I hope you won’t be angry with her for saying that,’ added Edgar
+apologetically, as he hastily folded the letter, feeling that he had
+read too much. ‘You know she means it kindly.’
+
+‘I know she has been ever so much more indulgent than I deserve,’
+answered Daphne gaily; ‘I mean to be a most dutiful daughter-in-law,
+and to learn everything your mother will deign to teach me in the way
+of housekeeping, from hemming tea-cloths to making mincemeat. One ought
+to make one’s own mincemeat, ought one not, Edgar? Do you and I belong
+to the class who make their own mincemeat?’
+
+‘I think it’s rather a question of inclination than of rank, love.
+But I’d rather you left the pies and puddings to the cook. I’d rather
+have you riding across the Vale of the Red Horse with me than stoning
+raisins or chopping suet in the still-room.’
+
+‘And I would rather, too.’
+
+‘Do you know that there is a great deal of quiet sagacity in your
+mother’s gentle depreciation of Daphne’s passion for mountain scenery?’
+said Gerald, his face lighting up with something of the old mischievous
+spirit, something of that gaiety of heart with which he had teased
+Daphne in the days when she was Poppæa and he was Nero! ‘This frantic
+admiration of snow-peaks is only a modern feeling, a mere fashion
+and fad of the moment, like the worship of Chippendale furniture and
+Adam chimney-pieces. The old Greeks knew nothing of it. The ancients
+never raved about their mountains. They valued them only because their
+tops touched the blue ether, the world peopled by the gods. Even your
+Shakespeare, the man of universal mind, had no passion for mountain
+lands.’
+
+‘Because he had never seen anything higher than the Wrekin, poor
+darling!’ said Daphne, with delicious compassion; as if she were
+speaking of a London Arab who had never seen a buttercup.
+
+‘Ruskin thinks it was good for his genius to have seen so little.
+“No mountain passions were to be allowed to Shakespeare,” he says;
+“Shakespeare could be allowed no mountains—not even any supreme natural
+beauty. He had to be left with his kingcups and clover, pansies, the
+passing clouds, the Avon’s flow, and the undulating hills and woods of
+Warwickshire, lest it should make him in the least overrate their power
+on the strong, full-fledged minds of men.”’
+
+‘That is remarkably clever,’ said Daphne; ‘but there is a tone of
+calm superiority about it which makes my blood boil. Why will all the
+critics insist upon patronising Shakespeare, as if they knew so much
+more about him than ever be know about himself? Talk of vivisection
+indeed, vivisection is not half so atrocious as the way Shakespeare has
+been treated by modern criticism!’
+
+And now, when all the valley below them lay steeped in golden light,
+when the northward-facing mountains were beginning to take the chill
+cold gray of evening, and the western pinnacles were flushed with rose
+and purple, they began their descent of the narrow winding way, gaily,
+to all seeming, for they talked a good deal, and Daphne lingered on her
+way to gather the wild flowers that grew on the thymy banks—harebells,
+and clover, gentian, and the Alpine rose, a white starry flower with
+a long fragile stem, and delicate ferns, and here and there a handful
+of wild strawberries. Gerald had more than once to insist upon her
+hastening her footsteps, lest night should overtake them on the steep
+mountain path.
+
+‘If you loiter so much I will put you into a wooden sledge when we get
+to the half-way house, and run you down the mountain,’ he threatened.
+
+Lovelier and yet more lovely looked the pine-woods, the green slopes,
+the fertile valley, the far-away white peaks, so shadowy, so awful in
+the changing lights of evening. Half the sky was ablaze with crimson
+and orange, fading off into tender opalescent greens and purples, the
+indescribable hues of rare jasper and rarer jade, as they neared the
+Staubach. They had loitered as long as it was safe to loiter. The lamps
+were lighted at the inn, and their coachman was watching for their
+return. They drove home through the gray twilight, which was fast
+deepening into night, and through a landscape of deepest gloom—a narrow
+region, walled in by dark hills; dim lights, dotted here and there
+amidst the darkness, ever so far apart, telling of lonely lives, of
+humble peasant homes where pleasure and variety were unknown, a life of
+monotonous labour, hidden from the world.
+
+‘Have you enjoyed your day, Daphne?’ asked Lina, as they drove home,
+the rapid river flowing noisily beside them, the white foam on the
+waters flashing through the gloom.
+
+‘Enjoyed it? There is no word big enough to say how delightful it has
+been! It is a day that will stand apart in the history of my life,’
+answered Daphne, slipping her hand lovingly through her sister’s arm.
+
+‘What a privileged nature to be so easily made happy!’ said Gerald,
+with a palpable sneer.
+
+People are apt to let slip society’s mask in such a moment, on a dark
+road shut in by mountain and wood, after a long and thoughtful silence,
+forgetting that feeling is audible in the darkness, though faces are
+hidden, and the clouded brow or the quiver of the lip is invisible.
+
+Gerald Goring had been thinking deeply during the hillside walk and
+the homeward drive, touched inexpressibly by Madoline’s affection, and
+trying as honestly as was possible to a character which was not given
+to mental or moral effort—trying to face a future clouded over with
+fears. Could he ever be again as he had been, Madoline’s true lover?
+This was the question which he asked himself, coming down the hill in
+the glory of the evening light, a little aloof from the other three.
+His honour and reverence for her were in nowise lessened by that fatal
+passion which had changed the current of his life. He knew that of
+all women he had ever met she was the noblest and the best; that, with
+her, life would be lifted above the sordid, vulgar level of selfish
+pleasures and sensual indulgences; that, as her husband, he could not
+fail to become in somewise useful to his species, to win some measure
+of renown, and to leave a name behind him that would sound sweet in the
+ears of generations to come. He could imagine her in the riper beauty
+of matronhood, the mother of his children, training up his sons to
+tread the loftier paths of life, rearing his daughters in an atmosphere
+of purity and love. He pictured her at the head of his household; he
+told himself that with such a wife he must be an idiot if he missed
+happiness. And then he looked with gloomy despairing eyes at the other
+side of the question, and tried to realise what his life would be with
+the butterfly being who had crept into his heart and made herself its
+empress.
+
+As well as he knew Lina’s perfection did he know Daphne’s faultiness.
+She was frivolous, selfish, shallow, capricious, vehement. Yes, but
+he loved her. She had no higher idea of this world than as a place
+made exquisitely beautiful in order that she might be happy in it;
+nor of her fellow-creatures than as persons provided to minister to
+her pleasures; nor of the future beyond life than as a vague misty
+something which had better not be thought about; nor of duty, but
+as a word found in the Church Catechism, and which one might banish
+from one’s mind after one’s confirmation. Yes, but he loved her.
+Her faultiness did not lessen his love by the weight of a grain of
+thistledown. He yearned to take her to his heart, faulty as she was,
+and cherish her there for ever. He longed to spend the rest of his days
+with her, and it seemed to him that life would be worthless without
+her. She might prove a silly wife, a careless mother. Yes, but he loved
+her. For him she was just the one most exquisite thing in creation, the
+one supreme necessity of his soul.
+
+‘“_Animæ dimidium meæ._” Yes, that is what she is,’ he said to himself
+as he sat in the summer darkness, with dreamy eyes looking upward to
+the lonely melancholy hills, where huge arollas of a thousand years’
+growth spread their black branches against the snow-line just above
+them. What a desolate world it looked in the gathering gloom!—only a
+few solitary stars gleaming in the infinite remoteness of the sky, the
+moon not yet risen above yonder snowy battlements.
+
+It was past nine o’clock when they drove into the shrubberied approach
+to the Jungfraublich. The hotel looked dazzling after the obscurity of
+the valley. Daphne would have liked to dash into the billiard-room and
+challenge her lover to a game; but, since it was impossible for a young
+lady to play at a public table, she went upstairs to the sitting-room
+on the first floor, where Sir Vernon was waiting for them, and where
+there was a table spread with tea, cold chickens, and rolls and honey.
+Lina sat by her father, telling him the history of their day, and
+hearing all he had to say about his letters and papers. Edgar was
+in tremendous spirits, and inclined to make fun of the queer little
+village on the edge of everlasting snows; Daphne was talkative; Sir
+Vernon was gracious. It was only Gerald Goring who bore no part in
+the conversation. He looked worn and wearied with the day’s work, and
+yet it had been nothing for an Alpine climber; a mere constitutional
+walk, barely enough to keep a man in training. When tea was over he
+retired to the balcony, and sat there, smoking cigarettes and watching
+the moon climb the dark slopes of heaven; while the others looked over
+newly-arrived papers and periodicals, and discussed to-morrow’s trip to
+Grindelwald and the glaciers.
+
+The morning came, as fair and fresh a dawn as ever peeped shyly
+across the edge of the Alps, but Gerald, watching the slow kindling
+of that rosy glow after a sleepless night, greeted the new day with
+no thanksgiving. To him, in his present frame of mind, it would have
+seemed a good thing if that day had never dawned; if this planet
+Earth had dropped out of its place in the starry procession, and gone
+down to darkness and chaos, like a torch burnt out. He rose with that
+inexorable sun, which pursues his course with so little regard for the
+griefs and perplexities of humanity, and was out in the dewy woods
+above the hotel before civilised people were stirring. Anything was
+better than to lie on a sleepless couch staring at the light. Here,
+moving about among the dark pine-stems, treading the narrow tracks,
+shifting his point of view at every turn in the path, life was less
+intolerable. He could think better—his brain was clearer—his pulse less
+feverish.
+
+‘What was he to do?’ he asked himself helplessly. What did Wisdom
+counsel? What did Honour urge? Surely about this latter voice there
+could be no question. Honour would have him be true to Madoline, at
+any sacrifice of his own feelings. Duty was plain enough here. He had
+pledged himself to her by every bond which honest men hold sacred. He
+must keep his word.
+
+‘But if we are both miserable for life?’ he asked himself. ‘Can she be
+happy if I am wretched? And what charm has existence for me without
+Daphne?’
+
+‘You must forget Daphne,’ urged Duty; ‘your first and nobler love must
+obtain the mastery. You must pluck this idle weed, this mere caprice,
+out of your heart.’
+
+He told himself that the thing was to be done and he would try honestly
+to do it. He would steel himself against Daphne’s wiles. Did not
+Ulysses pluck himself away from the enchantress’s fatal island, wrench
+himself out of her very web, and get home to Ithaca sound in body and
+mind, and live happy ever afterwards with his faithful Penelope? Or at
+least this is the popular idea of Ulysses, in spite of those breathings
+of slander which make the Circe episode something more than Platonic.
+What nobler image can life give than that of a faithful lover, a loyal
+husband, tempted and yet true? Nor did poor little Daphne go out of
+her way to exercise Circean arts. She charmed as the flowers charm,
+innocently and unconsciously. She was no Becky Sharp, weaving a subtle
+web out of people’s looks and smiles, drooping lashes, lifted eyelids,
+the arrowy gleams of fatal green eyes. She wanted to be faithful to her
+lover, and loyal to her sister. Her letter had been straight and true.
+If he sinned, he sinned of his own accord, and had no such excuses as
+Adam used against the partner God had given him.
+
+He wandered about restlessly, in an utterly purposeless way, till it
+was time to go back to the seven o’clock breakfast. He would have liked
+to start alone for the shining slate mountain yonder, to spend the day
+there in a sultry solitude, lying on his back and staring up at the
+unfathomable blue, smoking a little, reading Heine a little—Heine’s
+ballad-book had been his gospel of late—idling away the empty day,
+and growing wiser and better in solitude. But he was pledged to go in
+beaten tracks; to go and eat and drink at The Bear, and gaze at the
+lower glacier, like a Cook’s tourist, and be faintly interested in the
+coachman’s exposition of the view, and be blandly tolerant of girls
+selling edelweiss, and boys waking the echoes with Alpine horns, and
+all the conventional features of that exquisite drive from Interlaken
+to Grindelwald.
+
+However much he might affect to despise the familiar route, he could
+not deny the beauty of the landscape by-and-by, when they were all
+seated in the carriage and had crossed the Lutschine for the first
+time, and were climbing slowly up the raised road above the river.
+It was a brilliant morning, the wooded hills steeped in sunlight
+and balmy summer air; the tender green of the young shoots showing
+bright against the sombre darkness of the everlasting pines; water
+rushing down the hillsides every here and there, sometimes a torrent,
+sometimes a fine thread like spun glass, dropping from crag to crag.
+The two young men got out of the carriage and walked up the hills; the
+valley through which the road wound was exquisitely verdant—a scene of
+pastoral beauty, fertile, richly wooded, but passing lonely. Daphne
+sorely missed the dappled kine which relieve and animate a Warwickshire
+landscape.
+
+‘What in Heaven’s name has become of the cattle?’ she exclaimed.
+‘Here are meadows, and homesteads, and gardens, and orchards, but
+not a living object in the landscape. I thought Switzerland swarmed
+with cows, and was musical with cowbells. And where is the chorus of
+herdsmen singing the “_Ranz des Vaches_?”’
+
+‘Perhaps there has been an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, and the
+cows have all been condemned,’ speculated Edgar.
+
+Gerald explained that the cattle and their keepers had all gone up into
+the higher regions to crop the summer herbage.
+
+‘And that accounts for this green and silent valley,’ said Daphne. ‘It
+is rather a romantic idea; but I should have liked to see the cattle
+all the same. I adore cows. I think a Jersey cow, with her stag-like
+head and eyes, is almost the loveliest thing in creation.’
+
+‘You shall have a herd of them at Hawksyard,’ exclaimed Edgar eagerly;
+‘and I will build you a Swiss cowhouse at the end of the walnut walk.’
+
+‘Thank you so much,’ said Daphne, with a faint smile, ‘but I was
+thinking of them only in the abstract.’
+
+There were times when any allusion to Hawksyard and the future
+irritated her like the sting of a summer insect.
+
+Children appeared at every turn of the circuitous road. Here a sickly,
+large-eyed girl offered a handful of dingy edelweiss; there an unkempt
+ill-fed boy ran beside the horses, flapping off the flies with a leafy
+branch of ash or walnut; anon appeared the mountain musician playing
+his plaintive strain upon the native horn, and waking melancholiest
+echoes amid the solemn hills. The road crossed the river several times,
+over covered bridges, wooden arcades, which made a picturesque bit in
+the landscape, a pleasant lounging place too, on such a summer morning.
+But there seemed to be nobody about save the fly-flapping boys, and
+women and children offering new milk or the everlasting edelweiss.
+
+It was the first time Daphne had seen the little velvety white flower,
+and she was keenly interested in it.
+
+‘Poor little colourless ice-blossom, so pale and dull-looking, like a
+life without joy or variety!’ she said. ‘They say that it grows under
+the snow. How nice it would be to go and hunt for it oneself! Please
+give the children plenty of money, Edgar.’ And Mr. Turchill, whose
+pockets were always full of loose Helvetian coins—leaden sous and
+dingy-looking half-francs—scattered his largesse among the natives with
+a liberality rare in modern excursionists.
+
+Half-way up the hill they came to a rustic restaurant, where the horses
+stopped to blow, and where the coachman invited the ladies to go and
+see a tame chamois in a little shed at the back of the house.
+
+‘He will be the first of his race I have seen,’ said Daphne, ‘though in
+Manfred’s time this part of the country seems to have been overrun by
+them.’
+
+They went through the restaurant kitchen to the shed behind it, to
+see the four-footed mountaineer. He was a melancholy little animal,
+altogether a shabby specimen of the chamois tribe, and looked sadly
+forlorn in his narrow den. One of his horns had been broken off,
+perhaps in the struggles that attended his capture.
+
+‘It is a painful sight,’ said Daphne, turning away with a sigh.
+
+She would have given all her pocket-money to set the chamois free; but
+he was one of the attractions of the house, and could not have been
+easily ransomed.
+
+And now again across the Black Lutschine, by another covered bridge,
+and up the steep winding road through a narrow gorge in the hills,
+until the cleft widens, and the Grindelwald valley opens before them in
+all its glory, ringed round with mountains, the Great Eiger standing
+boldly out in front of them, with broad patches of snow on his dark
+stony front, behind a bold edge of pine-clad hill. There is unspeakable
+grandeur in that bleak and rugged mountain rising above the verdure and
+beauty of the nearer hills.
+
+Daphne clasped her hands in unalloyed delight.
+
+‘It would be worth while coming to Switzerland if it were only for
+this,’ she exclaimed; ‘yet I am tortured by the idea of all the
+mountain-passes, glaciers, and waterfalls that we are not going to see.
+I have a great mind to throw away my Baedeker. He makes me positively
+miserable with suggestions that I can’t carry out.’
+
+‘You will be able to see all you care about next year,’ said Edgar,
+‘when you and I are free to go where we like. I believe it will be
+always where _you_ like.’
+
+‘Next year seems half a century off,’ she answered carelessly.
+
+Their journey was nearly done. The carriage went down into the valley,
+then climbed another hill, and they had paused the outskirts of the
+village of Grindelwald, and were drawing up in the garden in front of
+the Bear Hotel. Very full of life and bustle was the inn garden on
+this bright summer morning. Tourists without number standing about,
+or sitting under the verandah, Americans, Germans, English, French,
+all full of life and enjoyment; some starting with their alpenstocks,
+intent on pedestrian excursions; ladies and sedentary middle-aged
+gentlemen being hoisted on to mules; carriages driving in; horses being
+fed and cleaned; a Babel of languages, a perpetual moving in and out.
+
+Mr. Goring ordered a slight refection of wine and coffee, rolls and
+honey, to be brought to a pleasant spot under the verandah, at a point
+where the view across the deep valley to the hills beyond was widest
+and grandest. Here they rested themselves a little before starting on
+foot for the lower glacier. Both Madoline and Daphne were in favour of
+walking.
+
+‘I went on a mule when I was here with my father,’ said Lina, ‘and I
+remember thinking how much I should have preferred being free to choose
+my own path.’
+
+It was a lovely walk, so soon as they were clear of the hotels and
+boarding-houses, and the scattered wooden _châlets_ of the village,
+just such a ramble as Daphne loved; a narrow footpath winding up and
+down a verdant hillside—here a garden, and there an orchard—funny
+little cottages and cottage-gardens perched anyhow on slopes and angles
+of the road; a rustic bridge across the rocky bed of a river; and there
+in front of them the glacier—a mass of corrugated ice lying on a steep
+slope between two mountains—shining, beautiful, like a pale sapphire.
+They loitered as much as they pleased by the wayside, Daphne straying
+here and there as her fancy led her—a restless, birdlike creature,
+almost seeming to have wings, so lightly did she flutter from hillock
+to crag, so airy was the step with which she skimmed along the narrow
+rocky pathway, beaten by the feet of so many travellers. They spent a
+good deal of time in the immediate neighbourhood of the glacier, ‘doing
+it thoroughly,’ as Edgar remarked afterwards, with a satisfied air; and
+then they went quietly back to The Bear, and dined in a corner of the
+big, barren dining-room, and drove back to Interlaken in the summer
+dusk, Gerald almost as silent as he had been the night before during
+the much shorter drive from Lauterbrunnen.
+
+‘I’m afraid it bores you to go over the ground you know so well,’ said
+Madoline, grieved at her lover’s silence, which looked like depression,
+or mental weariness.
+
+‘No; the country is too lovely, one could hardly tire of it,’ he
+answered; ‘but don’t you think it intensely melancholy? There is
+something in the silence and darkness of these hills which fills my
+soul with gloom. Even the lights scattered about here and there are so
+remote and so few that they only serve to intensify the solitude. So
+long as sunlight and shadow give life and motion to the scene it is gay
+enough; but with nightfall one finds out all at once how desolate it
+is.’
+
+There was more excursionising next day, and again on the next; then
+came Sunday morning and church, and then a walk through the pine-woods
+to see some athletic sports that were held in a green basin which made
+a splendid amphitheatre, round whose grassy sides the audience sat
+picturesquely grouped on the velvet sward. On this day the young women
+came out in all the glory of their canton costume—snowy habit-shirts
+and black velvet bodices, silver chains pendent from their shoulders,
+silver daggers or arrows thrust through their plaited hair, long
+silk aprons of brightest colours—a costume which gave new gaiety to
+the landscape. Then in the evening there was a concert at the little
+conversation-house in the walnut avenue, a concert so crowded by native
+and foreigner that there was never an empty seat in the verandah, and
+the waiters were at their wits’ ends to keep everyone supplied with tea
+and coffee, lemonade and wine. After the concert there were fireworks,
+coloured lights to glorify the fountains—almost the gayest, brightest
+scene that Daphne’s eyes had ever looked upon. Then, when Bengal lights
+and rockets had faded and vanished into the summer night, they walked
+quietly back to the hotel under a starry sky.
+
+‘I believe Daphne likes Bengal lights better than stars,’ said Gerald
+mockingly, as he gave Madoline his arm, and went on with her in advance
+of the others, across a field that lay on the other side of the walnut
+walk.
+
+‘You may believe anything you like of Daphne’s bad taste and general
+idiocy,’ the girl retorted; and Lina was distressed at thinking how
+disagreeable these two, whom she would have had so affectionately
+attached, always were to each other.
+
+And all the while Gerald Goring was wondering what he was to do with
+his life—whether it were possible to break the chain which bound him,
+that golden chain which had once been his chief glory—whether it were
+possible to reconcile honour and love.
+
+They left Interlaken next morning, and went straight through to the
+little station at Montreux. Daphne, who had pored over her Baedeker
+till she fancied that she knew every inch of Switzerland, was deeply
+grieved at not being able to go on to Lucerne and the Rigi, Flüelen,
+and all the Tell district; but Sir Vernon would go no farther than
+Interlaken. He considered that he had made a sufficient sacrifice of
+his own comfort already for his younger daughter’s pleasure.
+
+‘I hate moving about, and I detest hotels,’ he said; ‘I am yearning for
+the quiet of my own house.’
+
+After this no more could be said. Daphne gave herself up to silent
+contemplation of the Jungfrau range throughout the journey, by boat and
+rail, hardly taking her eyes from those snowy peaks till they melted
+from her view, fading ghostlike in the blue ether.
+
+‘They seem to be a part of my life,’ she said, as she turned from the
+carriage window with a regretful sigh; ‘I cannot bear to think that I
+have seen the last of them.’
+
+‘Only for this year,’ answered Edgar cheerily, not caring much for
+mountains in the abstract, but ready to admire anything that Daphne
+loved. ‘It is such an easy matter to come to Switzerland nowadays. The
+Jungfrau is as accessible as Brighton Pier.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+‘THER WAS NO WIGHT, TO WHOM SHE DURSTE PLAIN.’
+
+
+They had been at Montreux more than a week, and it seemed to Daphne as
+if she had lived half her life on the shore of the beautiful lake, with
+the snowy summit of the Dent du Midi rising yonder in its inaccessible
+grandeur, above the fertile hills of the foreground, those precipitous
+green slopes, where _châlets_ and farms were dotted about picturesquely
+in positions that would have seemed perilous for birds’ nests.
+
+The villa was charming; a white-walled _château_ all plate-glass
+windows, verandahs, balconies, brightened from roof to basement by
+crimson and white Spanish blinds. The rooms were prettily furnished
+in a foreign style—commodes, cabinets, clocks, candelabra, and Louis
+Quatorze chairs of a painfully upright architecture. To these Sir
+Vernon had added several easy-chairs and couches of the _pouf_ species,
+hired from an upholsterer at Geneva. Photographs in velvet or ivory
+frames, books, work-baskets, easels, and five-o’clock tea-tables,
+brought from South Hill, gave a home-like air to the rooms; and a
+profusion of the loveliest flowers, exquisitely arranged, told of
+Madoline’s presence.
+
+There was a delicious garden sloping down to the lake, whose
+gently-curving shore made here a lovely bay; a garden in which
+roses grew as they only grow in the neighbourhood of water. There
+were summer-houses of the airiest construction; trellised walks,
+rose-shaded; a parterre of carefully-chosen flowers, with a fountain in
+the centre; and the blue bright water at the edge of the lawn.
+
+Here Daphne had established her boat, a light skiff with a felucca
+sail and a striped awning, to be used at pleasure; a boat which, seen
+flitting across the lake in the sunshine, looked like a swallow.
+There was a capital boat-house at a corner of the lawn, wooden and
+delightfully Swiss, with balconies fronting the lake, and an upper room
+in which one could take one’s pleasure, sketching, writing, reading,
+tea-drinking. The weather had been peerless since their arrival at
+Montreux; and Madoline and Daphne spent the greater part of their lives
+out of doors. They were always together, Daphne rarely leaving the
+shelter of her sister’s wing. She had become amazingly industrious, and
+had begun a tremendous piece of work in crewels, neither more nor less
+than a set of curtain-borderings for the drawing-room at Hawksyard.
+Vainly had Madoline entreated her to begin with an antimacassar or a
+fender-stool, some undertaking which would demand but a reasonable
+exercise of patience and perseverance. Daphne would hear of no work
+that was not gigantic.
+
+‘Do you think Cheops would ever have been famous if he had begun to
+make pyramids on a small scale?’ she asked. ‘He would have exhausted
+his interest in the idea, frittered away his enthusiasm upon trifles.
+How much wiser it was in him to make a dash at something big while his
+fancy was at a white heat! If I don’t embroider a set of curtains I’ll
+do nothing.’
+
+‘Well, dearest, you must follow your own fancy,’ answered Lina gently;
+‘but I’m afraid your life will be a history of great beginnings.’
+
+Daphne began with extraordinary industry upon a bold pattern of
+sunflowers and acanthus leaves, huge sunflowers, huge foliage, on a
+Pompeian-red ground. Whenever she was not in her boat, skimming about
+the lake, she was toiling at a leaf or a sunflower, sitting on a
+cushion at Lina’s feet, the sunny head bent over her work, the slim
+white fingers moving busily, the dark brows knitted, in the intensity
+of her occupation. She was always intent upon finishing a leaf, or a
+stalk, or a petal, or on realising the grand effect of a completed
+flower. She would sit till the last available moment before dinner,
+rushing off to dress in a frantic hurry, and reappearing just as the
+subdued announcement of dinner was being breathed into Sir Vernon’s
+ear. Edgar was filled with delight to see her so occupied. It seemed to
+him a pledge of future domesticity.
+
+‘It is so sweet to see you working for our home,’ he said one
+afternoon, seated on the grass at her feet, and placidly watching every
+stitch.
+
+‘Eh?’ she said, looking up in half-surprise, being much more interested
+in the sunflowers for their own sakes than in their future relation to
+the old Warwickshire Grange. ‘Oh yes, to be sure. I hope I shall finish
+the curtains; but it is a dreadful long way to look forward. There will
+be three hundred and fifty-five sunflowers. I have done one and a half.
+That leaves just three hundred and fifty-three and a half to do. I
+rather wish it were the other way.’
+
+‘Beginning to flag already?’ said Lina, who was sketching a little bit
+of the mountain landscape on the other side of the lake, a bold effect
+of sun and shadow.
+
+‘Not the least in the world,’ cried Daphne; ‘only I do so long to
+see the effect of the curtains when they are finished. It will be
+stupendous. But do you know, Edgar, I am afraid your mother will detest
+them. One requires to be educated up to sunflowers; and Mrs. Turchill
+belongs to that degraded period of art in which people could see beauty
+in roses and lilies.’
+
+‘One can hardly look back upon those dark ages without a shudder,’ said
+Gerald Goring, stretched on a rustic bench close at hand, looking up at
+the blue sky, an image of purposeless idleness. ‘Thank Providence we
+have emerged from the age of curves into the age of angles—from the
+Hogarthian to the Burne-Jonesian ideal of beauty.’
+
+‘There was a period in my own life when I had not awakened to the
+loveliness of the sunflower,’ said Daphne gravely. ‘I know the first
+time I was introduced to one in crewel-work I thought it hideous; but
+since I have known Tadema’s pictures I am another creature. Yet I doubt
+if, even in my regenerate state, a garden all sunflowers would be quite
+satisfactory.’
+
+‘You would require the Roman atmosphere, classic busts and columns,
+Tyrian-dyed draperies, and everybody dressed in the straight-down
+Roman fashion,’ replied Gerald languidly. ‘No doubt Poppæa was fond
+of sunflowers; and I daresay they grew in that royal garden where
+Messalina held such high jinks that time her imperial husband came home
+unexpectedly and somewhat disturbed the harmony of the evening.’
+
+It was altogether an idle kind of life which they were leading just now
+at Montreux. During the first week Edgar and Daphne had excursionised
+a little upon the nearest hillsides in the early morning before
+breakfast; but lovely as were the chestnut-woods and the limpid
+streamlets gushing out of their rocky beds and dripping into stone
+troughs fringed with delicate ferns, exquisite as was the morning air,
+and the fairy picture of the lake below them, developing some new charm
+with every hundred yards of the ascent, Daphne soon wearied of these
+morning rambles, and seemed glad to forego them.
+
+‘The weather is getting horribly oppressive,’ she said, ‘or perhaps
+I am not quite so strong as I used to be. I would rather sit in the
+garden and amuse myself more lazily.’
+
+‘You must not pretend to be an invalid,’ said Edgar cheerily; ‘come
+now, Daphne: why, there are not many girls can handle a pair of sculls
+as you do.’
+
+‘I didn’t say I was an invalid. In my boat I feel in my element, but
+listlessly creeping about these hills wearies me to death.’
+
+‘You are very different from me,’ answered Edgar reproachfully. ‘Your
+company is always enough for my happiness.’
+
+‘Then you shall have as much of my company as you please in the garden
+or on the lake. But pray let us be idle while we can. When Aunt Rhoda
+arrives we shall be goaded to all kinds of excursionising, dragged up
+every hill in the district.’
+
+‘I thought you wanted to climb mountains?’
+
+‘Yes, mountains; Mont Blanc, or the Matterhorn, or Monte Rosa—anything
+respectable. But to exhaust one’s energy in scaling green banks! Why,
+in Wales they would call the Col du Jaman a bank. However, when Aunt
+Rhoda arrive I shall be equal to the effort. Of course we shall have to
+do Chillon.’
+
+‘I thought you were so interested in Chillon.’
+
+‘Yes, as an image in my mind. I love to gaze at its dark towers from
+the distance, to send my fancies back to the Middle Ages, penetrate the
+gloomy prison and keep the captives company—but to go over the cells
+formally, in the midst of a little herd of tourists, staring over each
+other’s shoulders, and treading upon each other’s toes—to be shown by
+a snuffy old custodian the ring to which Bonnivard was chained, the
+grating out of which he could see the “little isle that in his very
+face did smile”—that is a kind of thing which I absolutely abhor.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Ferrers had written to her brother, informing him that as she
+had been all her life longing for a glimpse of Swiss scenery, and
+that as so favourable an opportunity had now presented itself for the
+gratification of that desire, she had made up her mind to come straight
+to Montreux by herself.
+
+‘It is a tremendous undertaking for one who has travelled so little,’
+she wrote; ‘for you know, dear Vernon, how my devotion to Lina and
+your interests kept me a prisoner at South Hill during those years in
+which I should naturally have been seeing all that is worth seeing in
+this beautiful world. It is an awful idea to travel all the way from
+Warwickshire to Lake Leman, with only a maid, but I feel that this is
+a golden opportunity which must not be lost. To be in Switzerland with
+you and dearest Lina will be a delight, the memory of which will endure
+all my life. It is quite hopeless to suppose that dear Marmaduke can
+ever travel with me beyond Cheltenham, or Bath, or Torquay. His health
+and his settled habits both forbid the thought. Why, then, should I not
+take advantage of your being in Switzerland to realise a long-cherished
+wish? I shall be no trouble to you: I do not ask you even to receive me
+under your roof, unless indeed you happen to have a spare room or two
+at your disposal. You can make arrangements for me and my maid to live
+_en pension_ at one of those excellent hotels which I am told abound
+on the banks of the lake, and I can spend all my days with you without
+feeling myself either a burden or an expense.’
+
+‘What are we to do, Lina?’ asked Sir Vernon, when his elder daughter
+had read the letter; ‘your aunt will be a terrible bore in any case,
+but I suppose she will be a little less of a nuisance if we put her out
+of the house.’
+
+‘There are three spare rooms,’ said Lina. ‘It would be rather
+inhospitable to send her to an hotel—if she will not be any trouble to
+you, dear father——’
+
+‘Oh, she will be no trouble to me,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘I’ll take care of
+that.’
+
+‘Then I think you had better let me write and ask her to stay with us.’
+
+‘Ask her!’ quoth Sir Vernon, ‘egad, she has asked herself.’
+
+The letter was written, and by return of post there came a gushing
+reply, announcing that Mrs. Ferrers had broken the intelligence of her
+departure to dear Marmaduke, who had borne the blow better than might
+have been expected, and who was amiably resigned to the loss of his
+wife’s society during the ensuing six weeks. Is not a modern Anglican
+cleric bound to imitate in somewise the example of the early Christian
+martyrs? Fire or sword he is not called upon to suffer, nor to fight
+with wild beasts in the arena; but these small domestic deprivations
+are a scourge of the flesh, which tend to exercise his heroic temper.
+
+‘Todd,’ said Marmaduke, in a fat and unctuous voice, ‘you must take
+particular care of me while your mistress is away. You know what I
+like, Todd, and you must make sure that I have it.’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Ferrers arrived one sunny afternoon, with three Saratoga trunks,
+and the newest things in sunshades. She had a generally exhausted air
+after her journey, and declared that she seemed to have been travelling
+since the beginning of the world.
+
+‘The dust, the heat, the glare between Paris and Dijon I can never
+describe,’ she protested as she sank into the most luxurious of the
+easy-chairs, which her eagle eye had detected at the first glance.
+
+‘Please don’t try,’ said Gerald, ‘we went through it all ourselves.’
+
+‘It was something too dreadful,’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking so cool
+and ladylike in her pale-gray cashmere gown and flounced sicilienne
+petticoat, that it was difficult to believe she had ever been a victim
+to dust and heat.
+
+She was refreshed with tea and bread and butter, and looked round her
+with placid satisfaction.
+
+‘It is really very sweet,’ she murmured. ‘This villa reminds me so
+much of the Fothergills’ place just above Teddington Lock—the lawn—the
+flower-beds—everything. But, do you know, Switzerland is not quite so
+Swiss as I expected to find it.’
+
+‘That was just what Daphne said,’ answered Madoline.
+
+‘Did she really?’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking across at Daphne, who
+was sitting idly by the low tea-table. Mrs. Ferrers felt a little vexed
+with herself at being convicted of coinciding with Daphne.
+
+‘I suppose it is inevitable,’ she said, with a lofty air, ‘that a
+place of which one has dreamed all one’s life, which one has pictured
+to oneself in all the brightest colours of one’s own mind and fancy,
+should be just a little disappointing. It was tiresome to be told
+at Geneva that Mont Blanc had not been seen for weeks, and it was
+provoking to find the cabman horribly indifferent about Rousseau—for,
+of course, I made a point of going to see his house.’
+
+‘And did you go to Ferney?’ asked Daphne eagerly. ‘Isn’t it pretty?’
+
+‘My dear Daphne, you forget that I am a clergyman’s wife,’ said Mrs.
+Ferrers, with dignity. ‘Do you suppose that I would worship at the
+shrine of a man who made a mock of religion?’
+
+‘Not of religion,’ muttered Gerald, ‘but of priestcraft.’
+
+‘But you were interested about Rousseau,’ said Daphne. ‘I thought they
+were both wicked men—that there was nothing to choose between them.’
+
+‘Voltaire’s infidelity was more notorious,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers; ‘I
+could never have told Marmaduke that I visited the house of an avowed——’
+
+‘Deist,’ interjected Gerald.
+
+Hard pressed, Mrs. Ferrers was constrained to admit that she had never
+read a line written by either Voltaire or Rousseau, and that she had
+only a kind of dictionary idea of the two men, so vague that their
+images might at any moment become confounded in her mind.
+
+When she had reposed a little after her journey, and had seen the
+contents of the Saratoga trunks arranged in wardrobe and drawers, Aunt
+Rhoda showed herself a most ardent votary of the picturesque. She had
+a volume of Byron in her hand all day, and quoted his description of
+Leman and Chillon in a way that was almost as exasperating as the
+torture inflicted by a professional punster. She insisted upon being
+taken to Chillon on the morning after her arrival. She made Gerald
+organise an excursion from Evian to the mountain village above, at the
+foot of the Dent d’Oche, for the following day. She made them take
+her to the Rochers de Naye, to the Gorge du Chauderon; to Lausanne by
+steamer one day, to Nyon another day. She was always exploring the
+guide-books in search of excursions that could be managed between
+sunrise and sundown.
+
+Sir Vernon, having settled himself in his study at Montreux, with books
+and papers about him, was just as much dependent for his comfort and
+happiness upon Lina’s society as ever he had been at South Hill. It
+was out of the question that a daughter so unselfish and devoted could
+leave her invalid father day after day. Thus it happened that Madoline
+in a manner dropped out of the excursionising party. Gerald could
+not be dispensed with—though he more than once declared in favour of
+staying at home—for nobody else was familiar with those shores, and
+Mrs. Ferrers protested that it would be impossible to get on without
+him.
+
+‘You all have your Baedekers,’ he argued, ‘and you are only going over
+beaten tracks. What more can you want?’
+
+‘Beaten tracks!’ exclaimed Aunt Rhoda indignantly. ‘I’m sure those
+pathways you took us up yesterday on the way to the Dent d’Oche had
+never been trodden upon except by the cows. And I hate groping about
+with my nose in a guide-book. One always misses the things best worth
+seeing. Do you think we could get on without him, Daphne?’ she asked
+in conclusion, appealing to her younger niece, to whom she had been
+unusually amiable ever since her arrival.
+
+‘I think we might manage without Mr. Goring,’ Daphne answered gravely,
+with never a glance at Gerald. She had scrupulously avoided all
+direct association with him of late. ‘Edgar and I are getting to know
+Switzerland and Swiss ways wonderfully well.’
+
+‘Have you ever been to the Gorge du Chauderon?’ asked Aunt Rhoda.
+
+Daphne confessed that this particular locality was unknown to her. She
+did not even know what the Gorge was, except that it sounded, in a
+general way, like a glen or ravine.
+
+‘Then how can you talk such arrant nonsense?’ demanded her aunt
+contemptuously. ‘What good could you or Edgar be in a place that
+neither of you have ever seen in your lives? You can’t know the proper
+way to get to it, or the safest way to get away from it. We should all
+tumble over some hidden precipice, and break our necks.’
+
+‘Baedeker doesn’t say anything about precipices,’ said Daphne, with her
+eyes on that authority.
+
+‘Baedeker thinks no more of precipices than I think of a country lane,’
+answered Aunt Rhoda.
+
+‘I am sure Lina would like to have Mr. Goring at home sometimes,’ said
+Daphne. Gerald had strolled out into the garden while they talked.
+‘Could we not get a guide?’
+
+‘I detest guides,’ replied her aunt, who knew that those guardians of
+the strangers’ safety were expensive, and fancied she might have to pay
+her share of the cost. ‘Gerald may just as well be with us as moping
+here. I know what my brother is, and that he will keep Lina dancing
+attendance upon him all day long.’
+
+Mr. Goring went with them everywhere, and seemed nothing loth to
+labour in their service. He knew the ground thoroughly, and led them
+over it in a quiet leisurely way, unknown to the average tourist, who
+goes everywhere in a scamper, and returns to his native land with his
+mind full of confused memories. He had to put up with a great deal of
+Aunt Rhoda’s society during all these excursions, and was gratified
+with lengthy confidences from that lady; for Daphne was loyal to her
+faithful lover, and walked with him and talked with him, and gave him
+as much of her company as was possible. She talked of Hawksyard and her
+future mother-in-law, of the tenants, and the villagers, the horses and
+dogs. She talked of hunting and shooting, of everything which most
+interested her lover; and then she went home in the evening so weary
+and worn out and heart-sick that she was glad to sit quietly in the
+verandah after dinner, petting a tawny St. Bernard dog called Monk,
+a gigantic animal, who belonged to the house, and who had attached
+himself to Daphne from her first coming with a warm regard. He was her
+sole companion very often in her boating excursions, when she went
+roaming about the lake in her light skiff, enjoying all the loveliness
+of the scene, as she could only enjoy it, in perfect solitude.
+
+‘Surely it is hardly safe for that child to go about without a
+boatman,’ exclaimed Mrs. Ferrers, as she stood at the open window of
+her brother’s study, watching the swallow-sail as it flitted across the
+sunlit ripples, bending to every movement of the water. ‘Vernon, do you
+know that the lake is over a thousand feet deep?’
+
+‘I don’t think the depth of water makes any difference,’ replied Sir
+Vernon calmly. ‘The Avon is deep enough to drown her; yet we never
+troubled ourselves about her aquatic amusements in Warwickshire. I have
+Turchill’s assurance that she is perfect mistress of her boat, and I
+think that ought to be enough.’
+
+‘Of course if you are satisfied I ought to be,’ said Mrs. Ferrers,
+with her ladylike shrug; ‘but I can only say that if I had a daughter
+I should not encourage her in a taste for boating. In the first place,
+because I cannot dispossess my mind of the idea of danger; and in the
+second, because I consider such an amusement revoltingly masculine.
+Daphne’s hands are ever so much wider since she began to row. I was
+horrified the other day at discovering that she wears six-and-a-half
+gloves.’
+
+Daphne liked those quiet mornings on the lake, or a ramble among
+vineyards or orchards, with Monk for her sole companion, better than
+the formal pilgrimages to some scene made famous by the guide-books.
+Those excursions with her aunt and Mr. Goring and Edgar had become
+passing wearisome. The strain upon her spirits was too great. The
+desire to appear gay and happy and at ease exhausted her. The effort
+to banish thought and memory, and to take a rapturous pleasure in
+the beauty of a picturesque scene, or the glory of a summer sky, was
+becoming daily more severe. To talk twaddle with Edgar, to smile in his
+face, with that gnawing pain, that passion of longing and regret always
+troubling her soul, was a slow torture which she began to think must
+sooner or later be mortal.
+
+‘Can I go on living like this for ever?’ she asked herself, after
+one of those endless summer days, when, in the same boat, in the
+same carriage with Gerald Goring, lunching at the same inn, admiring
+the same views, treading the same narrow paths or perilous wooden
+footbridges, she had yet contrived to keep herself aloof from him.
+‘Can I always go on acting a part—pretending to be true when I am
+false to the core of my wicked heart, pretending to be happy when I am
+miserable?’
+
+The mountains and the lake were beginning to lose something of their
+enchantment, something of their power to lift her out of herself and
+to make her forget human sorrow amidst the immensities of Nature. She
+did not love them less as they grew familiar, nay, her love increased
+with her knowledge; but the distraction diminished. She could think
+of herself and her own sorrow now, under the walls of Chillon, just
+as keenly as in the elm walk in Stratford churchyard. The wide lake
+glittering in the morning sun was no longer a magical picture, before
+which every thought of self faded. Gliding dreamily along the blue
+water she gave herself up to a sadness that was half bitter, half
+sweet; bitter, because she knew that her life was to be spent apart
+from Gerald Goring; sweet, because she was so certain of his love. He
+told her of it every day, however carefully she avoided all direct
+association with him: told her by veiled words, by stolen looks, by
+that despondency and gloom which hung about him like a cloud. Love has
+a hundred subtle ways of revealing itself. A fatal passion needs not to
+be expounded in the preachments of a St. Preux, in the moral lectures
+and intellectual flights of a Julie. Briefer and more direct is the
+language of an unhappy love. It reveals itself unawares; it escapes
+from the soul unconsciously, as the perfume from the rose.
+
+Daphne was very thankful when her aunt’s active and insatiable spirit
+was fain to subside into repose; not because Mrs. Ferrers was tired
+of sight-seeing, but simply because she had conscientiously done
+every lion within a manageable distance of Montreux. In her secret
+soul Aunt Rhoda thought contemptuously of the bluest, biggest, lake
+in Switzerland, and all the glory of the Savoy range. Had not these
+easily-reached districts long ceased to be fashionable? Her soul
+yearned for Ragatz or Davos, St. Moritz or Pontresina, the only places
+of which people with any pretence to good style ever talked nowadays.
+It was all very well for Byron to be eloquent about Lake Leman or
+ecstatic about Mont Blanc; for in his time railways and monster
+steamboats had not vulgarised Savoy, and a gentleman might be rapturous
+about scenes which were only known to the travelled Englishman. But
+to-day, when every Cook’s tourist had scaled the Montanvert, when ‘Arry
+was a familiar figure on the skirts of the Great Glacier, who could
+feel any pride or real satisfaction in a prolonged residence on the
+Lake of Geneva. With all those subtle wiles of which a worldly woman
+is mistress did Mrs. Ferrers try to direct her brother’s thoughts and
+fancies towards the Engadine. She reminded him how the fashionable
+London physician had lauded the life-giving, youth-renewing quality
+of the atmosphere, and had particularly recommended Pontresina, if he
+could but manage the journey.
+
+‘But I can’t manage it, and I don’t mean to manage it,’ retorted Sir
+Vernon testily. ‘Do you suppose I am going to endure a jolting drive of
+twenty-four hours——’
+
+‘Fourteen at most,’ murmured his sister.
+
+‘A great deal you know about it! Do you think I am going to be carted
+up hill and down hill in order to get beforehand with winter on a bleak
+plateau, diversified with glaciers and pine-trees? It is absurd to
+suggest such a thing to a man in weak health.’
+
+‘It is for your health that I make the suggestion, Vernon,’ replied
+his sister meekly. ‘You cannot deny that Dr. Cavendish recommended the
+Engadine.’
+
+‘Simply because the Engadine is the last fad of the moneyed classes.
+These doctors all sing the same song. One year they send everyone to
+Egypt, another year they try to popularise Algiers. One would suppose
+they were in league with the Continental railways and steam companies.
+One might get one’s nerves braced just as well at Broadway or Malvern,
+or on the Cornish moors; one might get well or die just as comfortably
+at Penzance or Torquay. You quite ignore the trouble of a change of
+quarters. I have made myself thoroughly comfortable here. If I were to
+go to the Engadine I should take only Lina and Jinman, and you would
+have to take Daphne home and keep her at the Rectory till our return.’
+
+This was not at all what Mrs. Ferrers had in view. She had taken for
+granted that if she could induce her brother to go to the Engadine
+she would be taken, as a matter of course, in his train. He was a
+free-handed man in all domestic matters, though he very often grumbled
+about his poverty; and he would have paid his sister’s expenses without
+a thought, if he were willing to endure her company. But it seemed that
+he was not willing, and that she had been unconsciously urging him to
+her own ruin. To have her Swiss experiences suddenly cut short, to
+have that audacious little flirt Daphne planted upon her for a month’s
+visit! The thing was too horrible to contemplate.
+
+‘My dear Vernon,’ she exclaimed, with affectionate eagerness, ‘if
+you do not feel yourself equal to the journey it would be madness to
+undertake it.’
+
+‘Exactly my own idea. Please say no more about it,’ he answered coldly.
+‘I am sorry you are tired of Montreux.’
+
+‘Tired! I adore the place. It is positively delicious. A little
+stifling, perhaps, in the heat of the day, but beyond measure, lovely.’
+
+After this Mrs. Ferrers never more spoke word about St. Moritz or
+Pontresina. She saw by last week’s society papers that everybody worth
+talking about was taking his or her pleasure in that exalted region;
+but she only sighed and kept silence. The ‘society papers’ ignored
+Lake Leman altogether, nor did they ever mention Mont Blanc. It seemed
+as if they hardly knew that such things existed. Their contributors all
+went straight through. Aunt Rhoda remembered how, many years before,
+when she had gone through the Trossachs and had been full of enthusiasm
+and delight, and had gone home proud of her tour, her travelled friends
+had so scorned her that she had never again ventured to mention Katrine
+or Lomond, Inversnaid or the Falls of Clyde.
+
+She settled down as well as she could to the domestic quiet of
+Montreux—the mornings and afternoons in the garden; the everlasting
+novels and poetry and crewel-work; Daphne and the St. Bernard sitting
+on the sloping grass by the edge of the water, or loitering about among
+the flowers. She bore this luxurious monotony as long as she could, and
+then she was seized with a happy thought which opened a little vista of
+variety.
+
+She discovered, one sultry afternoon, that Lina was looking pale and
+fagged, and called her brother’s attention to that fact.
+
+‘I don’t wish to alarm you, Vernon,’ she said, as they were all
+sitting at afternoon tea on the lawn, in the shade of a magnificent
+willow, whose long tresses trailed in the lake; ‘but I believe if you
+don’t give Lina a little change from this baking valley, she will be
+seriously ill.’
+
+‘Pray don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda; I assure you that I am perfectly
+well,’ remonstrated Madoline, looking up from her cups and saucers.
+
+‘My dear, you are one of those unselfish creatures who go on pretending
+to be well until they sink,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, with an air of
+knowing ever so much more about Lina than Lina knew herself. ‘You
+are languishing—positively pining for mountain air. Everybody is not
+created with the constitution of a salamander,’ she added, with a
+contemptuous glance at Daphne, who was sitting in the full glare of the
+afternoon sun, ‘and for anybody except a salamander this place for the
+last three days has been almost intolerable. Dearly as I love you all,
+and delighted as I am to be with you, it has been only the idea of the
+dust and the heat of the railway that has prevented my going back to
+Warwickshire.’
+
+Sir Vernon looked uneasily at his beloved daughter. He had kept her a
+good deal about him; he had let her stay at home to bear him company,
+when the others were breathing the cool air of the lake, or climbing
+into the fresher atmosphere of the hills; and now it slowly dawned upon
+him that his selfishness might have endangered her health. Rhoda was
+always an alarmist—one of those unpleasant people who scent calamity
+afar off, and are prescient of coming trouble in the hour of present
+joy; but it was true that Madoline was pale and languid-looking. She
+had a fatigued look, and her beauty had lost much of its bloom and
+freshness.
+
+‘Lina is not looking well,’ he said, glancing at her uneasily; ‘what
+can we do for you, dear?’
+
+‘Nothing, father,’ answered Lina, with her gentle smile: ‘there is
+nothing the matter.’
+
+‘You told me this morning that you could not sleep last night,’
+murmured Mrs. Ferrers.
+
+‘It was a very warm night,’ admitted Lina, vexed at her aunt’s
+fussiness.
+
+‘Warm! It was stifling. This lake is at the bottom of a basin,
+completely shut in by hills,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, as if she had made a
+discovery. ‘I’ll tell you what we could do, Vernon. I might take the
+two girls up to the hotel at Glion, or at Les Avants. They are both
+very nice rustic hotels, clean and airy. A few days in that mountain
+air would pick Lina up wonderfully.’
+
+‘Would you like to go, dear?’ asked Sir Vernon doubtfully.
+
+‘I should like it of all things, if you would go with us,’ answered his
+daughter; ‘but I don’t want to leave you.’
+
+‘Never mind me, Lina. I can get on pretty well for a few days, sorely
+as I shall miss you. I suppose three or four days will be enough?’
+
+‘Ample,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, delighted at having gained her point. ‘We
+can ramble about and see everything that is to be seen in three or four
+days.’
+
+‘So be it, then. Start as soon as you like. You had better send Jinman
+up at once to engage rooms for you. This is Monday. I suppose if you
+start to-morrow morning you can come back on Friday.’
+
+‘Certainly. Three days in that magnificent air will be quite long
+enough to make Lina strong,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, assured that in
+three days she would have exhausted the pleasures of a lively hotel and
+picturesque surroundings.
+
+‘I wish you were coming with us, dear father,’ said Madoline.
+
+‘My dearest, do you think it would do me any good to have my old
+bones dragged up an almost perpendicular hill, and to put up with the
+indifferent accommodation of a rustic hotel? I am much better taking my
+ease here. The young men will want to go with you, no doubt.’
+
+‘If you please, sir,’ answered Edgar.
+
+Gerald Goring said never a word, but it was taken for granted that he
+meant to go. He and Madoline must, of course, be inseparable until that
+solemn knot should be tied which would make them one and indivisible
+for ever and ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+‘I WOLDE LIVE IN PEES, IF THAT I MIGHT.’
+
+
+They had been three days at the homely, comfortable hotel at Les
+Avants, and Madoline was looking all the better for the fresh hillside
+air, an improvement upon which Mrs. Ferrers expatiated as the latest
+confirmation of the one all-abiding fact of her own ineffable wisdom.
+It was one of the loveliest days there had been in all that delicious
+month of summer weather—passing warm, yet with a gentle west wind that
+faintly stirred the heavy chestnut leaves, and breathed on Daphne’s
+cheek, or fluttered round her neck like a caress, scarcely moving the
+soft lace ruffle round her throat. It was a day on which a white gown
+seemed the only thing possible in costume, and Daphne and Lina were
+both dressed in white. It was not by any means the kind of day for
+climbing or excursionising of any kind, as even that ardent explorer
+Aunt Rhoda was fain to confess; rather a day on which to wander gently
+up and down easy paths, or to sit in the pine-woods reading Tennyson or
+Browning, or adding a few lazy stitches to the last sunflower in hand.
+
+‘You seem to go at your work with a good deal less vigour, Daphne,’
+said Edgar, seated at his lady’s feet, on a carpet of fir-needles, his
+knees drawn up to his chin, clad in light-gray alpaca, and a Panama hat
+on the back of his head—a cool but not especially becoming costume. Mr.
+Turchill was not one of those few men who look well in unconventional
+clothes.
+
+‘The weather is too warm for industry.’
+
+‘I’m afraid those curtains will never be finished.’
+
+‘Oh yes, they will!’ said Daphne, ‘I mean to persevere. I may be a
+very old woman by the time they are done, but I am not going to give
+in. Lina says my life is a thing of shreds and patches. I will show
+her that I am not to be daunted by the stupendousness of a task. Three
+hundred and fifty-one and a quarter sunflowers still to be done.
+Doesn’t it rather remind you of that type of the everlasting—a rock
+against which a bird scrapes its beak once in a thousand years, and
+when the bird has worn away the whole rock, time will come to an end?
+Please go on with “Luria,” and try to be a little more dramatic and a
+little less monotonous.’
+
+‘I am a wretched reader,’ said Edgar apologetically, as he looked for
+his place; ‘but I think I might read a shade better if I understood
+what I was reading. Browning is rather obscure.’
+
+‘I’m afraid you have not a poetic mind. You didn’t seem to understand
+much of “Atalanta in Calydon,” which you so kindly read to us
+yesterday.’
+
+‘I’m afraid I didn’t,’ confessed the Squire of Hawksyard, with
+praiseworthy meekness. ‘Modern poetry is rather difficult. I can always
+understand Shakespeare, and Pope, and Crabbe, and Byron, but I own that
+even Wordsworth is beyond me. His meaning is pretty clear, but I can’t
+discover his beauties.’
+
+‘Simply because your intellectual growth was allowed to stop when you
+left Rugby. But I insist upon you learning to appreciate Tennyson and
+Browning; so please go on with “Luria.”’
+
+‘In my opinion, Daphne,’ remarked Aunt Rhoda, with an oracular air, ‘it
+would have been much better for the balance of your mind if you had
+read a great deal more prose and a great deal less poetry. Good solid
+reading of a thoroughly useful kind would have taught you to think
+properly, and to express yourself carefully, instead of perpetually
+startling people by giving utterance to the wildest ideas.’
+
+‘I think I speak as the birds sing,’ answered Daphne, ‘because I can’t
+help it.’
+
+‘The habit of sober thought is a valuable one, which I hope you will
+acquire by-and-by, when you are mistress of a household; or else I am
+sorry for your future husband.’
+
+‘Please don’t be sorry for me, Mrs. Ferrers,’ protested Edgar,
+reddening angrily, as he always did at any slight to Daphne; ‘I am so
+perfectly contented with my fate that it would be a waste of power to
+pity me.’
+
+‘It is early days yet,’ sighed Aunt Rhoda. ‘But I live in the hope that
+Daphne will steady and tone down before she becomes a wife.’
+
+‘If you don’t begin to read this instant,’ whispered Daphne, with her
+rosy lips close to Edgar’s ear, ‘I shall be made the text of one of
+Aunt Rhoda’s homilies.’
+
+Edgar took the hint, and plunged anyhow and anywhere into the pages of
+Browning.
+
+They lived all day in the woods, taking their luncheon picnic fashion
+under the pine-trees. The two young men catered, and fetched and
+carried for them, assisted by Mowser. They brought cold fowls,
+and sliced Strasbourg ham, and salad, fruit and cake, a bottle of
+Bordeaux, and another of a Swiss white wine, which was rather like
+a weak imitation of Devonshire perry. But such a meal, spread upon
+a snow-white tablecloth under pine-trees, over whose dark feathery
+tops gleam the blue bright summer heaven, is about the most enjoyable
+banquet possible for youthful revellers. Even Aunt Rhoda admitted that
+it was an agreeable change from the home comforts of Arden Rectory.
+
+‘I hope my dear Rector is being taken care of,’ she murmured
+plaintively, when she had dulled the edge of an appetite sharpened by
+that clear air.
+
+‘I hope you will all do justice to the chickens,’ said Gerald, looking
+across at Daphne, who sat by Edgar’s side in a thoroughly Darby and
+Joanish manner. ‘I remember once being at a picnic in a forest where
+an elderly fowl was made quite a feature of. My hostess fancied I was
+desperately hungry, and was quite distressed at my avoidance of the
+ancient bird.’
+
+Daphne’s eyes were on her plate, but a slow smile crept over her
+face in spite of herself. She and Gerald had scarcely looked at each
+other in all those days among the pine-trees. They had lived in daily
+intercourse, and yet contrived to dwell as completely apart as if the
+lake had flowed between them; as if he, like St. Preux, had gazed
+across the blue waters to catch the glimmer of his beloved’s casement,
+and she, like Julie, had pined in the home that was desolate without
+love’s fatal presence. It was hardly possible for resolve to have
+been firmer than Daphne’s had been since that night at Fribourg. It
+was hardly possible for an honest purpose to have been more honestly
+fulfilled.
+
+Mowser, waiting upon the picnickers, saw that significant look of
+Gerald’s, and Daphne’s answering smile; just as she had seen many
+things at South Hill and elsewhere which only her observant eyes had
+noted.
+
+‘Still at your old tricks, my young lady,’ she said to herself; ‘but
+Jane Mowser has got an eye upon you, and your mockinventions shan’t
+succeed, if Mowser’s faithful service can circum-prevent you.’
+
+After luncheon they all sat idly looking down at the distant lake,
+lying so far beneath their feet, like a pool of blue water in the
+hollow of the hills, or wandered a little here and there, searching
+out higher points from which to look down at the lake, or across to
+the cloud-wrapped Alps. As the day wore on the light western breeze
+dropped and died away, and there came the stillness of a sultry August
+afternoon, just such an atmosphere as that of the lotus-eaters’ isle,
+the land where it was always afternoon.
+
+Aunt Rhoda, who had lunched more copiously than the others, succumbed
+to the enervating influence of summer. The outline antimacassar
+on which she had been diligently stitching a design of infantine
+simplicity—a little girl with a watering-pot, a little boy with an
+umbrella—dropped from her hands. The blue lake below winked at her in
+the sunshine like a Titanic eye. The soft sweet breath of the pines
+gratified her nostrils, and that delicious sense of being gently baked
+through and through in Nature’s slow oven finally overcame her, and she
+sank into a thoroughly enjoyable slumber, a sleep in which she knew she
+was sleeping, and tasted all the blessedness of repose.
+
+Daphne sat on a knoll a little way below her aunt, struggling with a
+sunflower, heartily tired of it all the time, and painfully oppressed
+by the consciousness of three hundred and fifty-one sunflowers
+remaining to be done after this one.
+
+‘It is like the line of the Egyptian kings,’ she murmured with a sigh.
+‘An endless procession—too stupendous for the imagination to grasp.’
+
+Edgar, stretched at the feet of his adored, had fallen as fast asleep
+as Aunt Rhoda. Madoline and Gerald had wandered off to the higher
+grounds. They were going to the Col du Jaman for anything Daphne knew
+to the contrary.
+
+This particular sunflower now approaching a finish seemed the most
+irritating of all his tribe. Daphne tightened her thread, pulled it
+into a knot, boggled at the knot, lost patience, and threw the work
+aside in a rage.
+
+‘Who could do crewel-work on such a stifling day?’ she cried, looking
+angrily down at the lake, with its girdle of towns and villages,
+gardens and vineyards; looking angrily even at picturesque Chillon,
+with its mediæval turrets and drawbridge, angrily at the calm,
+snow-shrouded Dent du Midi, and the dark green hills around its base.
+
+Then, having explored the wide landscape with eyes blind for this
+moment to its beauty, she looked discontentedly at the reclining form
+at her feet, the faithful lover, slumbering serenely, oblivious of
+wasps and centipedes.
+
+‘A log,’ she muttered to herself, ‘a log. Blind and deaf! Good; yes, I
+know he is good, and I try to value him for his goodness; but oh, how
+weary I am—how weary—how weary!’
+
+She flung aside her work, and wandered away along a narrow winding
+pathway, trodden by the feet of previous wanderers, upward and upward
+towards the granite point of the Dent du Jaman, gray against the
+sapphire sky. She walked, scarcely knowing where she went, or why:
+urged by a fever of the mind, which hurried her any whither to escape
+from the weariness of her own thoughts; as if such escape were possible
+to humanity.
+
+She had been walking along the same serpentine path for nearly an
+hour, neither knowing nor caring where it might be leading her. The
+gray peak of the granite rock always rose yonder in the same distant
+patch of blue above the dark pine-trees. It seemed as if she might go
+on mounting this hilly path for ever and get no nearer to that lonely
+point.
+
+‘It as far off as happiness or contentment,’ she said to herself; ‘vain
+to dream of reaching it.’
+
+She stopped at last, and looked at her watch, feeling that the
+afternoon was wearing on, and that it might be time for her to hurry
+back to the family circle. It was past five, and the dinner hour was
+seven; and she had been roaming upwards by paths which might lead her
+astray in the descent, one woodland path being so like another. She
+began her homeward journey, walking quickly, her thoughtful eyes bent
+upon the ground. She was hurrying on, absorbed in her own thoughts,
+when her name was uttered by that one only voice which had power to
+thrill her soul.
+
+‘Daphne!’
+
+She looked up and saw Gerald Goring, seated on a fallen pine-trunk,
+smoking.
+
+He flung away his cigarette and came towards her.
+
+‘Good afternoon,’ she said, with a careless nod; ‘I am hurrying back to
+dinner.’
+
+He put out his hand and caught her by the arm, and drew her towards him
+authoritatively.
+
+‘You are not going to escape me so easily,’ he said, pale to the lips
+with strongest feeling. ‘No; you and I have a long reckoning to settle.
+What do you think I am made of, that you dare to treat me as you have
+done for the last month? Am I a dog to be whistled to your side, to be
+lured away from love and fealty to another by every trick, and grace,
+and charm within the compass of woman’s art, and then to be dismissed
+like a dog—sent back to my former owner? You think you can cure me of
+my folly—cure me by silence and averted looks—that I can forget you and
+be again the man I was before I loved you. Daphne, you should know me
+better than that. You have kindled a fire in my blood which you alone
+can quench. You have steeped me in a poison for which you have the only
+antidote. Oh! my Œnone! my Œnone! will you refuse the balm that can
+heal my wounds, the balsam that you alone can bestow?’
+
+Daphne looked at him without flinching, the sweet girlish face deadly
+pale, but fixed as marble.
+
+‘I told you what I thought and meant in my letter,’ she said quietly.
+‘I have never wavered from that.’
+
+‘Never wavered!’ he cried savagely. ‘You are made of stone. I have
+been trying you. I have been waiting for you to give way. I knew it
+must come in the end, for I know that you love me—I know it—I know
+it. I have known it almost ever since I came back to South Hill, and
+saw your cheek whiten when you recognised me; and I have been waiting
+to see how long this drama of self-sacrifice would last—how long you
+would deny your love, and falsify your whole nature. It has lasted long
+enough, Daphne. The chase has been severe enough. Your tender feet have
+been wounded by the thorny ways of self-sacrifice. Your poor Apollo’s
+patience is well-nigh worn out. My love, my love, why should we go on
+dissembling to each other, and to all the rest of the world, looking at
+each other with stony countenances—dumb—cold, when every throb of each
+burning heart beats for the other, when every feeling in each breast
+responds to its twin soul, as finely as a note of music to the touch
+of the player? Let us end it all, Daphne. Let us make an end of this
+long dissimulation—this life of hypocrisy. Come with me, dear; fly with
+me. Now, Daphne—now, this instant, before there is time for either of
+us to repent. We can be married to-morrow morning at Geneva—it can be
+easily managed in that Puritan city. Come away with me, my beloved.
+I will honour and respect your purity as faithfully as if a hundred
+knights rode at your saddle-bow. My beloved, do you think that good can
+come to anyone by a life-long lie, by the trampling out of Nature’s
+sweetest purest feeling in two loving hearts?’
+
+He had drawn her to his breast. Folded in a lover’s arms for the first
+time in her life, she looked up into eyes whose passionate ardour
+seemed to encompass her with a divine flame: as if this man who clasped
+her to his breast had been indeed the old Greek god, sublime in the
+radiance of youth and genius and immortal beauty.
+
+‘Daphne, will you be my wife?’
+
+‘I cannot answer that question yet,’ she said slowly, falteringly,
+after a pause of some moments. ‘You must give me time. Let me go
+now—this instant. I must hurry back to the hotel.’
+
+‘What! when I hold you in my arms for the first time?—when I am steeped
+in the rapture of a satisfied love? Oh Daphne, if you knew how often
+in feverish dreams I have held you thus; I have looked down into your
+eyes, and drunk the nectar of your lips. What?’ as she drew herself
+suddenly away from him; ‘even now you refuse me one kiss—the solemn
+pledge of our union; cruel, too cruel girl!’
+
+‘To-morrow shall decide our fate,’ she said. ‘For pity’s sake, as you
+are a gentleman, let me go.’
+
+He released her that moment. His arms dropped at his sides, and she was
+free.
+
+‘There was no necessity for that appeal,’ he said coldly; ‘you can
+go—alone if you choose—though I should like to walk back to the hotel
+with you. I left—your sister’ (it seemed as if it were difficult for
+him to pronounce Lina’s name) ‘in the garden before I strolled up here.
+I thought you were with your devoted lover. You say to-morrow shall
+decide our fate. I cannot imagine why you should hesitate, or postpone
+your decision. I know that you love me as fondly as I love you, and
+that neither of us can ever care for anyone else. Promise me at least
+one thing before we part to-day. Promise me that you will break off
+this pitiful mockery of an engagement to a man whom you despise.’
+
+‘I do not despise him—that is too hard a word—but I promise that I will
+never be Edgar Turchill’s wife.’
+
+‘Lose no time in letting him know that. My blood boils and my heart
+sickens every time I see him touch your hand. Thank God, he keeps his
+kisses for your hours of privacy.’
+
+‘He has never kissed me but once in my life,’ said Daphne, tossing up
+her head, and blushing angrily.
+
+‘Thank God again.’
+
+‘Good-bye,’ she said, looking at him with a pathetic tenderness, love
+struggling with despair.
+
+He leaned against the brown trunk of a fir-tree, pale to the lips,
+his eyes fixed on the ground, where the mosses and starry white
+blossoms, and tremulous harebells, and delicate maidenhair fern shone
+like jewels in the golden patches of light which flickered with every
+movement of the dark branches above them. His eyes perused every leaf
+and every petal, noting their form and colour with mechanical accuracy
+of observation. His pencil could have reproduced every detail of that
+little bit of broken ground six months afterwards.
+
+‘Daphne,’ he said huskily, ‘you are very cruel to me. I am not going to
+let you see how low a man can sink when he loves a woman as weakly, as
+blindly, as madly as I love you. I am not going to show you how base he
+can be—how sunk in his own esteem. There is some remnant of pride left
+in me. I am not going to crawl at your feet, or to shed womanish tears.
+But I tell you all the same, you are breaking my heart.’
+
+‘It is all foolishness,’ said Daphne, pale, but calm of speech and
+eye, every nerve braced in the intensity of her resolution. ‘It is
+folly and madness from beginning to end. You confessed as much just
+this moment. Why should I sacrifice my honour and my self-respect to
+gratify a weak, blind, mad love? I love my sister with a truer, better,
+holier affection than I could ever feel for you—if I had been your wife
+five-and-twenty years, and it were our silver wedding-day.’
+
+She smiled even in her despair at the impossible image of herself and
+Gerald Goring grown middle-aged and stout and commonplace, like the
+principal figures in a silver wedding.
+
+‘Why cannot you let the past be past—forget that you ever have been so
+foolish, so false, as to care for me?’
+
+‘Forget! yes, if I could do that. It would be as easy to pluck my
+heart out of my body and go on living comfortably afterwards. No,
+Daphne, I can never forget. No, Daphne, I can never go back to the old
+calm tranquil love. It never was love. It was friendship, affection,
+respect—what you will, but not love. I never knew what love meant till
+I knew you.’
+
+‘Good-bye,’ she said gently, perceiving that an argument of this kind
+might go on for ever.
+
+It was sweet to hear him plead; there was even a fearful kind of
+happiness—half sweet, half bitter—in being alone with him in that
+silent wood, in knowing that he was her own; heart, mind, and soul
+devoted to her; ready to sacrifice honour and good name for her sake:
+for what would the world say of him if he jilted Madoline and ran away
+with Madoline’s sister? Her breast swelled with ineffable pride at the
+thought of her triumph over this man to whom her girlish heart had
+given itself unwittingly, on just such a summer afternoon as this, two
+years ago. The man who had so often seemed to scorn her, to regard her
+only as a subject for friendly ridicule, in the beginning of things at
+South Hill. He was at her feet; she had made him her slave. Her heart
+thrilled with delight at the knowledge of his love; yet above every
+selfish consideration was her thought of her sister, and that made her
+firm as the granite peak of Jaman yonder, rising sharply above its
+black girdle of firs.
+
+She looked at him for a few moments steadily, with a curious smile,
+a smile which lighted up the expressive face with an almost inspired
+look. Her hand rested lightly on the lace at her throat, the
+finger-tips just touching the pearl necklace, Lina’a new year’s gift,
+which she wore constantly. It was her talisman.
+
+‘Let us shake hands,’ she said, ‘and part friends.’
+
+‘Friends!’ he echoed scornfully, ‘am I ever anything else than your
+friend? I am your slave. The greater includes the less.’
+
+He clasped her hand in both of his, lifted it to his lips, and then let
+her go without a word.
+
+The smile faded from her face as she turned from him. She went slowly
+down the hill by the winding path. Gerald took a hasty survey of the
+scene, and then struck downwards by a descent that seemed almost
+perpendicular.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+‘FOR LOVE AND NOT FOR HATE THOU MUST BE DED.’
+
+
+When Daphne and Gerald were gone, and the fair woodland scene was
+empty, a third figure came slowly out of the fir-grove, a substantial
+form clad in a rusty black-silk gown, short petticoats, side-laced
+cashmere boots, and a bonnet which was only thirty years behind the
+prevailing fashion. This antique form belonged to Jane Mowser, who
+carried a little basket of an almost infantine shape, and who had
+been gathering wild strawberries for her afternoon refreshment. While
+thus engaged she had espied Daphne’s white frock gleaming athwart the
+dark stems of the firs, and had contrived to skirt the pathway, and
+keep the young lady in view. Thus she had been within earshot when
+Daphne and Gerald Goring met, and had heard the greater part of their
+conversation. ‘I’ve known it and foreseen it. I knew it would come
+to this from the very beginning,’ she muttered breathlessly; ‘and I’m
+thankful that I’m the chosen instrument for finding them out. Oh, my
+poor Miss Madoline, what a viper you have nourished in your loving
+bosom! Oh, the artfulness of that anteloping girl! pretending to reject
+him, and leading him on all the time, and meaning to run away with him
+to-morrow, and be married on the sly at Geneva, as truly as my name is
+Mowser. But I’ll put a stop to their goings on. I’ll let in the light
+upon their dark ways. Jane Mowser will prove a match for an antelope
+and a traitor.’
+
+The little basket trembled in Mrs. Mowser’s agitated grasp, as she
+trotted briskly downhill to the hotel. ‘I’ll make their baseness known
+to Sir Vernon,’ said Mowser, ‘and if he has the heart of a man he’ll
+crush that fair-haired young viper.’
+
+Having detested Daphne from the day of her birth, Mowser now felt a
+virtuous thrill, the sense of a relieved conscience, in the idea that
+Daphne had justified her dislike. It would have been pain and grief to
+her had the girl turned out well; but to have her judgment borne out,
+her wisdom made clear as daylight, every evil feeling of her heart
+fully excused by the girl’s bad conduct, this was comfort which weighed
+heavily in the scale against her honest sorrow for the mistress whom
+she honestly loved.
+
+She had no idea that the revelation she was going to make must
+necessarily lead to the cancelment of Madoline’s engagement. Her notion
+was that if Sir Vernon were made acquainted with the treachery that had
+been going on in his family circle, he would turn his younger daughter
+out of doors, and compel Gerald Goring to keep faith with his elder
+daughter. She allowed nothing for those finer shades of feeling which
+generally lead to the breaking of matrimonial engagements. It seemed to
+her that if a man had got himself engaged to a girl, and wanted to cry
+off, he must be taken by the scruff off his neck, as it were, and made
+to fulfill his promise.
+
+When seven o’clock came and the _table-d’hôte_, Daphne was shut up in
+her own room with a bad headache; Mr. Goring was missing; and there
+were only Aunt Rhoda, Madoline, and Edgar to take their accustomed
+places near one end of the long table. A little pencilled note from
+Daphne had been brought to Madoline by one of the chambermaids, just
+before dinner:
+
+‘I have been for a long, long walk, and the heat has given me a
+dreadful headache. Please excuse my coming to dinner. I will have some
+tea in my room.’
+
+‘That foolish girl has been walking too far for her strength, no
+doubt,’ said Mrs. Ferrers. ‘She is always in extremes. But what has
+become of Mr. Goring? Has he been overwalking himself too?’
+
+‘I think not,’ answered Lina, smiling; ‘we were dawdling about together
+near the hotel till four o’clock, and I don’t suppose he would start
+for a long ramble after that.’
+
+‘Then why is he not at dinner?’
+
+This question was unanswerable. They could only speculate vaguely about
+the absent one. Nobody had seen him after he parted from Madoline at
+the garden gate. Perhaps he had walked to Vevey, perhaps to Montreux,
+miscalculating the distance, and the time it would take him to go
+and return. There was an uncomfortable feeling all through the slow
+protracted dinner, Madoline’s eyes wandering to the door every now
+and then, expecting to see Gerald enter; Edgar out of spirits because
+Daphne was absent; Mrs. Ferrers overcome by the heat, and beginning to
+perceive that Swiss scenery was a delight of which one might become
+weary.
+
+‘I am so vexed with myself for falling asleep and letting Daphne roam
+about alone,’ said Edgar, staring absently at a savoury mess of veal
+and vegetable to which he had mechanically helped himself.
+
+‘I don’t see why you should blame yourself for Daphne’s want of common
+sense,’ answered Aunt Rhoda somewhat snappishly. ‘It was an afternoon
+that would have sent anybody to sleep. Even I, who am generally so
+wakeful, closed my eyes for a few minutes over my book.’
+
+If Mrs. Ferrers had confessed that she had been snoring vigorously for
+an hour and a half, she would have been nearer the truth.
+
+Dinner came to its formal close in the shape of an unripe dessert, and
+there was still no sign of Gerald. Edgar went up to the corridor and
+knocked at Daphne’s door to inquire if her head were better.
+
+She answered from within in a weary voice:
+
+‘Thanks; no! It is aching awfully. Please don’t trouble yourself about
+me. Go for a nice walk with Lina.’
+
+‘Don’t you think if you were to come out and sit in the garden the cool
+evening air would do you good?’
+
+‘I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow.’
+
+‘Then you will not be well enough to go back to Montreux to-morrow
+morning? We had better put off the journey.’
+
+‘On no account. I shall be quite well to-morrow. It is only a headache.
+Please go away and enjoy your evening.’
+
+‘As if I could enjoy life without you. Good-night, darling. God bless
+you!’
+
+‘Good-night,’ replied the tired voice, and he went away sorrowing.
+
+What was his life worth without her? Absolutely nothing. He had chosen
+to make this one delight, this one love, the all-in-all of existence.
+
+He went down into the garden with a moody dejected air and joined Lina,
+who was sitting in a spot where the view of the valley below and the
+height above was loveliest; but Lina was scarcely more cheerful than
+Edgar. She was beginning to feel seriously uneasy at Gerald’s absence.
+
+‘You don’t think anything can have happened—any accident?’ she asked
+falteringly.
+
+‘Do you mean that he can have tumbled off a precipice? Hardly likely.
+A man who has climbed Mont Blanc and the Jungfrau would scarcely come
+to grief hereabouts. I think the worst that has befallen him is to have
+lost his dinner.’
+
+They sat in the garden till the valley and lake below were folded in
+darkness, and the moon was climbing high above the dark fir trees and
+the gray peak, and then Lina’s heart was lightened by the sound of a
+sympathetic tenor voice, whose every tone she knew, singing _La Donna e
+mobile_, in notes that floated nearer and nearer as the singer came up
+the grassy slope below the garden. She went to meet him.
+
+‘My dear Gerald, I have been miserable about you.’
+
+‘Because I didn’t appear at dinner? Forgive me, dearest. The heat gave
+me a racking headache, and I thought a tremendous walk was the only way
+to cure it. I have been down to Montreux, and seen your father, who is
+pining for your return. He looked quite scared when I dashed into the
+garden where he was reading his paper on the terrace by the lake. I was
+not ten minutes at Montreux altogether.’
+
+‘Dear father! It was very good of you to go and see him.’
+
+‘It was only a peep. I’m sorry you felt fidgety about me.’
+
+‘I am sorry you had a headache. It seems an epidemic. Daphne was not
+able to appear at dinner for the same reason.’
+
+‘Poor little Daphne!’
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were to start upon their return journey early next morning, so
+as to reach Montreux before the tropical heat of afternoon. They all
+breakfasted together in Madoline’s sitting-room between six and seven,
+Aunt Rhoda, who was a great advocate of early rising, looking much the
+sleepiest of the party. Daphne was pale and spiritless, but as she
+declared herself perfectly well nobody could say anything to her.
+
+They started at seven o’clock. There were two carriages; a roomy
+landau, and a vehicle of composite shape and long service for Mowser
+and the luggage. Daphne at once declared her intention of walking.
+
+‘The walk downhill through fields and orchards and vineyards’ will be
+lovely,’ she said.
+
+‘Delicious,’ exclaimed Edgar; ‘but don’t you think it is rather too far
+for a walk?’
+
+‘Are you too lazy to walk with me?’
+
+‘I don’t think you need insult me by such a question.’ On which Daphne
+set out without another word, waving her hand lightly to Madoline as
+she vanished at a turn in the road.
+
+Gerald Goring handed the two ladies to their seats in the landau, and
+took his place facing them. He had a listless worn-out look, as if his
+pedestrianism last night had exhausted him.
+
+‘You are not looking well, Gerald,’ Lina said anxiously, disturbed at
+seeing his haggard countenance in the clear morning light.
+
+‘My dearest, who could possibly look well in such a languid atmosphere
+as this? We are in a vaporous basin, shut in by a circle of hills. Down
+at Montreux it is like being at the bottom of a gigantic forcing-pit;
+here, though we fancy ourselves ever so high, we are only on the side
+of the incline. The wall still rises above us. At this season we ought
+to be at Davos or Pontresina.’
+
+‘Those are the only places people go to nowadays,’ said Mrs. Ferrers
+discontentedly. ‘I shall be almost ashamed to tell my friends where I
+have been. All the people one meets in society go to the Engadine.’
+
+‘I don’t think that idea need spoil our enjoyment of this lovely
+scenery,’ said Madoline. ‘Look at Daphne and Mr. Turchill, what a way
+they are below us!’
+
+She pointed with her sunshade to a glancing white figure among the
+chestnut groves below. Edgar and Daphne had descended by those steep
+straight paths which made so little of the distance, while the horses
+were travelling quietly along the gentle windings of the road. It was
+a lovely drive to Montreux, the town and its adjacent villages looking
+like a child’s toys set out upon a green table; the castle of Chillon
+distinctly seen at every turn of the road; the hillsides shaded by
+Spanish chestnuts, big and old; verdant slopes mounting up and up
+towards a blue heaven. They passed the little post and telegraph office
+at Glion, a wooden hut, baked through and through with the sun, like
+an oven; the hotel where the children were at play in the garden, and
+a few early-rising adults strolled about rather listlessly, waiting
+for breakfast; and then down by the ever-winding road, past many a
+trickling waterfall; sometimes a mere cleft in the rock, sometimes a
+stony recess in a low wall, fringed with ferns, where the water drops
+perpetually into the basin below, and so by wooded slopes descending
+steeply to the sapphire lake, past the parish church, picturesquely
+situated on the hillside, and by many a public pump with a double
+spout, and tanks where the women were washing linen or vegetables under
+an open roof. Some kind of industry was going on at all these public
+fountains; or at least there was a group of children dabbling in the
+water.
+
+They were at Montreux before ten o’clock; Sir Vernon delighted to have
+his elder daughter back again, and even inquiring civilly about Daphne,
+who had not yet arrived, despite the tremendous spurt she and Edgar had
+begun with.
+
+‘That is just like Daphne,’ said her father, when he was told how she
+had insisted on walking all the way. ‘She is always beginning something
+tremendous and never finishing it. I daresay we shall have Turchill
+down here presently in search of a carriage to bring her the second
+half of the way.’
+
+‘Yesterday she gave herself a headache by roaming about the hills,’
+said Aunt Rhoda; ‘she has not a particle of discretion.’
+
+‘Do you expect her to be full of wisdom at eighteen, Auntie?’ asked
+Madoline deprecatingly.
+
+‘I can only say, my dear, that at eighteen I was not a fool,’ replied
+Mrs. Ferrers sourly; and Lina did not argue the question further,
+knowing but too well how her aunt was affected towards Daphne.
+
+The pedestrians made their appearance five minutes later, none the
+worse for their long walk through fields and vineyards, and across
+cottage-gardens and orchards, a walk full of interest and diversity.
+Daphne, flushed with exercise, looked ever so much better than she had
+looked at breakfast, where she had been without appetite even for her
+beloved rolls and honey.
+
+‘I have a little business to arrange in Geneva,’ said Gerald, while
+they were all sitting about the airy drawing-room in a purposeless way,
+before settling down into their old quarters and old habits. ‘I think
+I shall take the train, as the quicker way, and then I can be back to
+dinner.’
+
+Madoline looked surprised.
+
+‘Have you anything very important to do in Geneva?’ she asked; ‘you
+never said anything about it before.’
+
+‘No; it is a necessity which has arisen quite lately. I’ll tell you all
+about it—afterwards. Good-bye till dinner-time. You must be tired after
+your morning drive, and you won’t feel inclined for much excursionising
+to-day.’
+
+‘I’m afraid we’ve seen everything there is to be seen within a
+manageable distance,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, rather dolefully.
+
+Daphne was sitting near the door. She had dropped into a low deep
+chair, and sat with her straw hat in her lap, full of wild flowers
+which she had gathered on her way down. Gerald stooped as he passed
+her, and took one of the half-withered blossoms—things so fragile in
+their delicate beauty that they faded as soon as plucked—and put it in
+his breast. The act was so carelessly done that no one seeing it would
+have perceived any significance in it, or could have guessed that the
+hand which took the flower trembled with suppressed feeling, and that
+the heart against which it lay beat loud with passion.
+
+‘I am going to make all arrangements for our marriage,’ he said in a
+low voice.
+
+‘Good-bye,’ she answered, looking straight up at him.
+
+He was gone. Her gaze followed him slowly to the door, and lingered
+there; then she rose and gathered up her flowers.
+
+‘I think I’ll go to my room and lie down,’ she said to Madoline.
+‘Please don’t let Edgar come worrying about me. Tell him to amuse
+himself without my company for once in a way.’
+
+‘My dearest, I don’t think he has any idea of amusing himself without
+you in Switzerland. How tired you look, my poor pet! Go and lie down
+and get a nice refreshing sleep after your walk. You shall not be
+disturbed till I come myself to bring you some tea. That will be better
+for you than coming down to luncheon.’
+
+‘I don’t feel much inclined for sleep, though I confess to being tired.
+I should like you to come and sit with me for a little, Lina, soon
+after luncheon, if you don’t mind.’
+
+‘Mind! My darling, as if I were not always glad to be with you.’
+
+Daphne went slowly up to her room, very slowly, with automatic steps,
+as one who walks in his sleep. The dark gray eyes looked straight into
+space, fixed and heavy with despair.
+
+‘He is mad, and I am mad,’ she said to herself. ‘How can it
+end—except——’
+
+Her room was bright and pretty, gaily furnished in that bright foreign
+style which studies scenic effect rather than solid comfort; French
+windows opening upon a balcony, shaded with a striped awning. The
+windows looked on to the lake, across the bright blue water to the
+opposite shore, with its grand and solitary hills, its villages few
+and far apart. Daphne stood for a long while looking dreamily at the
+expanse of bright water, and the bold and rugged shore beyond; at
+Chillon in its rocky corner; at the deep dark gorge whence the yellow
+Rhone comes rushing in, staining Lake Loman’s azure floor. How lovely
+it all was—how lovely, and yet of how little account in the sum of
+man’s destiny! All Nature’s loveliness was powerless to mend one broken
+heart.
+
+‘What was it that he read on my hand that day at Fontainebleau?’ she
+asked herself. ‘Was it this? was it this?’
+
+A steamer went by laden with people, a band playing a waltz tune. The
+world seemed full of thoughtless souls, for whom life meant only idle
+empty pleasures. Daphne turned away from that sunlit scene sick at
+heart, wishing that she were lying quietly in one of those green dells
+through which they had passed to-day, a leafy hollow hidden in the
+hillside, and that life were ebbing away without an effort.
+
+‘Seneca was a wise and learned man,’ she thought; ‘but with all his
+wisdom he found it difficult to die. Cleopatra’s death sounds easier—a
+basket of fruit and a little gliding snake a bright pretty creature
+that a child might have played with, and been stung to death unawares.’
+
+She threw herself on the bed, not tired from her walk, which seemed
+as nothing to the lithe active limbs, but weary of life and its
+perplexities. Oh, how he loved her, and how she loved him! And what a
+glorious godlike thing life would be in his company! Glorious, but it
+must not be; godlike, but honour barred the way.
+
+‘Oh God! let me never forget what she has been to me,’ she prayed, with
+clasped hands, with all her soul in that prayer—‘sister, mother, all
+the world of love, and protection, and comfort—teach me to be true to
+her; teach me to be loyal.’
+
+For two long hours she lay, broad awake, in a blank tearless despair;
+and then the door was gently opened, and Madoline came softly into the
+room and seated herself by the bed. Daphne was lying with her face to
+the wall. She did not turn immediately, but stretched out her hand to
+her sister without a word.
+
+‘Dearest, your hand is burning hot; you must be in a fever,’ said
+Madoline.
+
+‘No; there is nothing the matter with me.’
+
+‘I’m afraid there is. I’m afraid that walk was too fatiguing. I have
+ordered some tea for you.’ The maid brought it in as she spoke; not
+Mowser; Mowser had kept herself aloof with an air of settled gloom,
+ever since her return to Montreux. ‘I hope you have had a nice long
+sleep.’
+
+‘I have not been able to sleep much,’ answered Daphne, turning her
+languid head upon her pillow, and then sitting up on the bed, a
+listless figure in a tumbled white gown, with loose hair falling
+over shoulders; ‘I have not been able to sleep much, but I have been
+resting. Don’t trouble about me, Lina dear. I am very well. What
+delicious tea!’ she said, as she tasted the cup which Madoline had just
+poured out for her. ‘How good you are! I want to talk with you—to have
+a long serious talk—about you and—Mr. Goring.’
+
+‘Indeed, dear. It is not often my lively sister has any inclination for
+seriousness.’
+
+‘No; but I have been thinking deeply of late about long engagements,
+and short engagements, and love before marriage, and love after
+marriage—don’t you know.’ Her eyes were hidden under their drooping
+lids, but her colour changed from pale to rose and from rose to pale as
+she spoke.
+
+‘And what wise thoughts have you had upon the subject, dearest?’ asked
+Lina lightly.
+
+‘I can hardly explain them; but I have been thinking—you know that I am
+not desperately in love with—poor Edgar. I have never pretended to be
+so; have I, dear?’
+
+‘You have always spoken lightly of him. But it is your way to speak
+lightly of everything; and I hope and believe that he is much more dear
+to you than you say he is.’
+
+‘He is not. I respect him, because I know how good he is; but that
+is all. And do you know, Lina, I have sometimes fancied that your
+feeling for Mr. Goring is not much stronger than mine for Edgar. You
+are attached to him; you have an affection for him, which has grown
+out of long acquaintance and habit—an almost sisterly affection; but
+you are not passionately in love with him. If he were to die you would
+be grieved, but you would not be heartbroken.’ She said this slowly,
+deliberately, her eyes no longer downcast, but reading her sister’s
+face.
+
+‘Daphne!’ cried Madoline, ‘how dare you? How can you be so cruel? Not
+love him! Why, you know that I have loved him ever since I was a child,
+with a love which every day of my life has made stronger—a love which
+is so rooted in my heart that I cannot imagine what life would be like
+without him. I am not impulsive or demonstrative—I do not talk about
+those things which are most dear and most sacred in my life, simply
+because they are too sacred to be spoken about. If he were—to die—if I
+were to lose him—no, I cannot think of that. It is heartless of you to
+put such thoughts into my mind. My life has been all sunshine—a calm
+happy life. God may be keeping some great grief in store for my later
+days. If it were to come I should bow beneath the rod; but my heart
+would break all the same.’
+
+‘And if the grief took another shape—if he were to be false to you?’
+said Daphne, laying her hand, icy cold now, upon her sister’s.
+
+‘That would be worse,’ answered Lina huskily; ‘it would kill me.’
+
+Daphne said not a word more. Her hands were clasped, as in prayer; the
+dark sorrowful eyes were lifted, and the lips moved dumbly.
+
+‘I ought not to have talked of such things, dear,’ she said, gently,
+after that voiceless prayer. ‘It was very foolish.’
+
+Lina was profoundly agitated. That calm and gentle nature was capable
+of strongest feeling. The image of a terrible sorrow—a sorrow which,
+however unlikely, was not impossible—once evoked was not to be banished
+in a moment.
+
+‘Yes; it was foolish, Daphne,’ she answered tremulously. ‘No good can
+ever come of such thoughts. We are in God’s hands. We can only be happy
+in this life with fear and trembling, for our joy is so easily turned
+into sorrow. And now, dear, if you are quite comfortable, and there is
+nothing more I can do for you, I must go back to Aunt Rhoda. I promised
+to go for a walk with her.’
+
+‘Isn’t it too warm for walking?’
+
+‘Not for Aunt Rhoda’s idea of an afternoon walk, which is generally to
+stroll down to the pier, and sit under the trees watching the people
+land from the steamers.’
+
+‘Shall you be out long, do you think?’
+
+‘That will depend upon Aunt Rhoda. She said something about wanting
+to go in the steamer to Vevey, if it could be done comfortably before
+dinner.’
+
+‘Good-bye! Kiss me, Lina. Tell me you are not angry with me for what I
+said just now. I wanted to sound the depths of your love.’
+
+‘It was cruel, dear; but I am not angry,’ answered Lina, kissing her
+tenderly.
+
+Daphne put her arms round her sister’s neck, just as she had done years
+ago when she was a child.
+
+‘God bless you, and reward you for all you have been to me, Lina!’ she
+faltered tearfully; and so, with a fervent embrace, they parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+‘IS THERE NO GRACE? IS THERE NO REMEDIE?’
+
+
+When the door closed on Madoline, Daphne rose and changed her
+crumpled muslin for a dressing-gown, and brushed the bright silky
+hair and rolled it up in a loose knot at the back of her head, and
+bathed her feverish face, and put on a fresh gown, and made herself
+altogether a respectable young person. Then she seated herself before
+a dressing-table, which was littered all over with trinket-boxes and
+miscellaneous trifles more or less indispensable to a young lady’s
+happiness.
+
+She had acquired a larger collection of jewellery than is usually
+possessed by a girl of eighteen.
+
+There were all Madoline’s birthday and New Year gifts: rings, lockets,
+bracelets, brooches, all in the simplest style, as became her youth,
+but all valuable after their kind. And there were Edgar’s presents: a
+broad gold bracelet, set with pearls, to match her necklace; a locket
+with her own and her lover’s initials interwoven in a diamond monogram;
+a diamond and turquoise cross; and the engagement ring—a half-hoop of
+magnificent opals.
+
+‘I wonder why he chose opals,’ mused Daphne, as she put the ring into
+the purple-velvet case in which it had come from the jeweller’s.
+‘Most people think them unlucky; but it seems as if my life was to be
+overshadowed with omens.’
+
+She put all her lover’s presents together, and packed them neatly in a
+sheet of drawing-paper, the largest and strongest kind of wrapper she
+could find. Then, when she had lighted her taper and carefully sealed
+this packet, she wrote upon it: ‘For Edgar, with Daphne’s love’—a
+curious way in which to return a jilted lover’s gifts.
+
+Then she sat for some time with the rest of her treasures opened out
+before her on the table where she wrote her letters, and finally she
+wrapped up each trinket separately, and wrote on each packet. On one:
+‘For Madame Tolmache;’ on another: ‘For Miss Toby;’ on a third: ‘For
+Martha Dibb.’ On a box containing her neatest brooch she wrote: ‘For
+dear old Spicer.’ There were others inscribed with other names. She
+forgot no one; and then at the last she sat looking dreamily at a
+little ring, the first she had ever worn—best loved of all her jewels,
+a single heart-shaped turquoise set in a slender circlet of plain gold.
+Madoline had sent it to her on her thirteenth birthday. The gold was
+worn and bent with long use, but the stone had kept its colour.
+
+‘I should like him to have something that was mine,’ she said to
+herself; and then she put the ring into a tiny cardboard box, and
+sealed it in an envelope, on which she wrote: ‘For Mr. Goring.’
+
+This was the last of her treasures, except the pearl necklace which she
+always wore—her amulet, as she called it—and now she put all the neat
+little packages carefully away in her desk, and on the top of them she
+laid a slip of paper on which she had written:
+
+‘If I should die suddenly, please let these parcels be given as I have
+directed.’
+
+This task being accomplished at her leisure, and the desk locked, she
+went once more to the open window, and looked out at the lake. The
+atmosphere and expression of the scene had changed since she looked
+at it last. The vivid dancing brightness of morning was gone, and the
+mellow light of afternoon touched all things with its pensive radiance.
+The joyousness of the picture had fled. Its beauty was now more in
+harmony with Daphne’s soul. While she was standing there in an idle
+reverie, a peremptory tap came at the door.
+
+‘Come in,’ she answered mechanically, without turning her head.
+
+It was Mowser, whose severe countenance appeared round the half-open
+door.
+
+‘If you please, Miss Daphne, Sir Vernon wishes to speak to you,
+immediate, in his study.’
+
+Seldom in Daphne’s life had such a message reached her. Sir Vernon had
+not been in the habit of seeking private conferences with his younger
+daughter. He had given her an occasional lecture _en passant_, but
+however he might have disapproved of the flightiness of her conduct, he
+had never summoned her to his presence for a scolding in cold blood.
+
+‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked hurriedly; but Mowser had
+disappeared.
+
+She went slowly down the broad shallow staircase, and to the room which
+her father had made his private apartment. It was one of the best rooms
+in the house, facing the lake, and sheltered from the glare of the sun
+by a couple of magnificent magnolia trees, which shaded the lawn in
+front of the windows. It was a large room with a polished floor, and
+pretty Swiss furniture, carved cabinets, and a carved chimney-piece,
+and a little blue china clock set in a garland of carved flowers.
+
+Sir Vernon was seated at his writing-table, grim, stern-looking, his
+open despatch-box before him in the usual official style. A little way
+off sat Edgar Turchill, his folded arms resting on the back of a high
+chair, his face hidden. It was the attitude of profound despondency,
+or even of despair. One glance at her father’s face, and then at that
+lowered head and clenched hands, told Daphne what was coming.
+
+‘You sent for me,’ she faltered, standing in the middle of the bare
+polished floor, and looking straight at her father, fearlessly, for
+there is a desperate sorrow which knows not fear.
+
+‘Yes, madam,’ replied Sir Vernon in his severest voice. ‘I sent for
+you to tell you, in the presence of the man who was to have been your
+husband, that your abominable treachery has been discovered.’
+
+‘I am not treacherous,’ she answered, ‘only miserable, the most
+miserable girl that ever lived.’
+
+Edgar lifted up his face, and looked at her, with such a depth of
+tender reproachfulness, with such ineffable pity as made his homely
+countenance altogether beautiful.
+
+‘I hoped I should have made you happy,’ he said. ‘God knows I have
+tried hard enough.’
+
+She neither answered nor looked at him. Her eyes were fixed upon her
+father—solemn tearless eyes, a marble passionless face—she stood
+motionless, as if awaiting judgment.
+
+‘You are the falsest and the vilest girl that ever lived,’ retorted Sir
+Vernon. ‘Perhaps I ought hardly to be surprised at that. Your mother
+was——’
+
+‘For God’s sake, spare her!’ cried Edgar huskily, stretching out
+his arm as if to ward off a blow, and the word on Sir Vernon’s lips
+remained unspoken. ‘That is no fault of hers. Let her bear her own
+burden.’
+
+‘She ought to find it heavy enough, if she has a heart or a
+conscience,’ cried Sir Vernon passionately. ‘But I don’t believe she
+has either. If she had a shred of self-respect, or common gratitude,
+or honour, or womanly feeling, she would not have stolen her sister’s
+lover.’
+
+‘I did not steal him,’ answered Daphne resolutely. ‘His heart came
+to me of its own accord. We both fought hard against Fate. And even
+now there is no harm done; it has been only a foolish fancy of Mr.
+Goring’s; he will forget all about it when I am—far away. I will never
+look in his face again. I will go to the uttermost end of the earth,
+to my grave, rather than stand between him and Madoline. Oh father,
+father, you who have always been so hard with me, do you remember that
+day at South Hill, directly after Mr. Goring came home, when I begged
+you, on my knees, to send me back to school, to France, or Germany,
+anywhere, so that I should be far away from my happy home—and from him?’
+
+Her tears came at this bitter memory. Yes, she had fought the good
+fight: but so vainly, to such little purpose!
+
+‘I knew that I was weak,’ she sobbed,’and I wanted to be saved from
+myself. But I am not so wicked as you think. I never tried to steal
+Mr. Goring’s heart. I have never imagined the possibility of my being
+in any way the gainer by his inconstancy. I have told myself always
+that his love for me was a passing folly, of which he would be cured,
+as a man is cured of a fever. I do not know what you have been told
+about him and me, or who is your informant; but if you have been told
+the truth you must know that I have been true to my sister—even in my
+misery.’
+
+‘My informant saw you in Mr. Goring’s arms; my informant heard his
+avowal of love, and your promise to run away with him, and be married
+at Geneva.’
+
+‘It is false. I made no such promise. I never meant to marry him. I
+would die a hundred deaths rather than injure Madoline. I am glad you
+know the truth. And you, Edgar, I have tried to love you, my poor dear;
+I have prayed that I might become attached to you, and be a good wife
+to you in the days to come. I have been honest, I have been loyal.
+Ask Mr. Goring, by-and-by, if it is not so. He knows, and only he can
+know, the truth. Father, Madoline need never be told that her lover has
+wavered. She must not know. Do you understand? She must not! It would
+break her heart, it would kill her. He will forget me when I am far
+away—gone out of his sight for ever. He will forgot me; and the old,
+holier, truer love will return in all its strength and purity. All this
+pain and folly will seem no more to him than a feverish dream. Pray do
+not let her know.’
+
+‘Do you think I would do her so great a wrong as to let her marry a
+traitor? a false-hearted scoundrel, who can smile in her face, and make
+love to her sister behind her back. She is a little too good to have
+your leavings foisted upon her.’
+
+‘If you tell her, you will break her heart.’
+
+‘That will lie at your door. I would rather see her in her coffin than
+married to a villain.’
+
+Edgar rose slowly from his seat and moved towards the door. He had
+nothing to do with this discussion. His mind could hardly enter into
+the question of Gerald Goring’s treachery. It was Daphne who had
+betrayed him; Daphne who had deceived him, and mocked him with sweet
+words; Daphne whose liking had seemed more precious to him than any
+other woman’s love, because he believed that no other man had ever
+touched the virginal unawakened heart. And now he was told that she
+could love passionately, that she could give kiss for kiss, and rain
+tears upon a lover’s breast, that from first to last he had been her
+victim and her dupe!
+
+‘Good-bye, Daphne!’ he said, very quietly. ‘I am going home as fast
+as train and boat can take me. I would have been contented to accept
+something less than your love, believing that I should win your heart
+in time, but not to take a wife whose heart belonged to another man.
+You told me there was no one else; you told me your heart was free.’
+
+‘I told you there was no one else who had ever cared for me,’ faltered
+Daphne, remembering her equivocating answer that evening at South Hill.
+
+‘I don’t want to reproach you, Daphne. I am very sorry for you.’
+
+‘And I am very sorry that an honest man whom I respect should have
+been fooled by a worthless girl,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘Give him back his
+engagement ring. Understand that all is over between you and him,’ he
+added, turning to his daughter.
+
+‘I wish it to be so. I have put all your presents together in a parcel,
+Edgar,’ answered Daphne. ‘You will receive them in due course.’
+
+‘It is best to be off with the old love before we are on with the new,’
+quoted Sir Vernon scornfully; ‘and she says she did not mean to run
+away with Goring, in spite of this deliberate preparation.’
+
+Edgar was gone. Daphne and her father were alone, the girl still
+standing on the very spot where she had stood when she first came into
+the room.
+
+‘I have told you nothing but the truth,’ she said. ‘Why are you so hard
+with me?’
+
+‘Hard with you!’ he echoed, getting up from before his desk and looking
+at her with vindictive eyes as he moved slowly towards the door. ‘How
+can I be hard enough to you? You have broken my daughter’s heart.’
+
+‘Father!’ she cried, falling on her knees and clinging to him in her
+despair. ‘Father, is she to have all your love? Have you no tenderness,
+no pity left for me? Am I not your daughter too?’
+
+‘Your mother was my wife,’ he answered curtly, pushing her out of his
+way as he passed from the room.
+
+He was gone. She knelt where he had left her, a desolate figure in the
+spacious bright-looking room, the afternoon sun making golden bars upon
+the brown floor, her yellow hair touched here and there with glintings
+of yellow light.
+
+She remained in the same attitude for some minutes, her heavy eyelids
+drooping over tearless eyes, her arms hanging listlessly, her hands
+loosely clasped. Her mind for a little while was a blank: and then
+there came into it unawares a verse, taken at random, from a familiar
+hymn:
+
+    ‘The trials that beset you,
+        The sorrows ye endure,
+     The manifold temptations,
+        That death alone can cure.’
+
+‘That death alone can cure,’ she repeated slowly, pushing back the
+loose hair from her eyes; and then she rose from her knees and went out
+through an open window into the garden.
+
+It was about five o’clock. There was a look of exquisite repose over
+all the scene, from the snow-bound summit of the Dent du Midi yonder,
+down to the gardens that edged the lake, like a garland of summer
+flowers encircling that peerless blue. It was abright glad-looking
+world, and passing peaceful. Far away beyond that grand range of hills
+lay the ice-fields of Savoy, the everlasting glaciers, gliding with
+impalpable motion in obedience to some mysterious law which is still
+one of Nature’s secrets, the wilderness of snow-clad peaks and wild
+moraines, the gulfs and caverns, the unfathomable abysses of silence
+and of death. Daphne thought of those unseen regions with a thrill of
+awe as she walked slowly down the slope of the lawn.
+
+‘I have seen so little of Switzerland after all,’ she said to herself,
+‘so little of this wide wonderful world.’
+
+She went to the toy _châlet_, the dainty opera-stage boat-house where
+her boat was kept. There was no friendly Bink here to launch the
+skiff for her, but the lower part of the boat-house jutted out over
+the gable, and the boat was always bobbing about in the limpid water.
+She had only to go down the wooden steps, unmoor her boat, and row
+away over that wide stretch of placid water which she had never seen
+disturbed by a tempest.
+
+As she was stepping into the boat, the dog Monk came bounding and
+leaping across the grass, and bounced into her arms, putting his huge
+fore-feet on her shoulders, and swooping an affectionate tongue over
+her pallid face. He had not seen her since her return from the hills,
+and was wild with rapture at the idea of reunion.
+
+‘No, Monk, not to-day,’ she said gently, as he tried to get into the
+boat with her; ‘not to-day, dear faithful old Monk.’
+
+The huge creature could have upset the boat with one bound; and
+the little hand stretched out to push him back must have been as a
+fluttering rose-leaf against his sinewy breast; but there was a moral
+force in the blanched face and the steady eye which dominated his brute
+power. He recoiled, and lifted up his head with a plaintive howl as the
+boat shot off, the twin sails, the white and scarlet awning, flashing
+in the sun.
+
+A little way from the shore Daphne paused, resting on her oars, and
+looking back at the bright garden, with its roses and magnolias, and
+many-coloured flower-beds, the white villa gay with its crimson-striped
+blinds; and then with one wide gaze she looked round the lovely
+landscape, the long range of hills, in all their infinite variety of
+light and shadow, verdant slopes streaked with threads of glittering
+water, vineyards and low gray walls, rising terrace above terrace,
+quaint Vevey, and gray old Chillon, the black gorge that lets in the
+turbid Rhone; churches with square towers and ivy-covered walls; and
+yonder the inexorable mountains of Savoy. For a little while her
+eye took in every detail of the scene: and then it all melted from
+her troubled gaze, and she saw not that grand Alpine chain, showing
+cloudlike amid the clouds, but the brown Avon and its dipping willows,
+the low Warwickshire hills and village gables, the distant spire of
+Stratford above the many-arched bridge, the water-meadows at South
+Hill, and the long fringe of yellow daffodils waving in the March wind.
+
+‘Oh for the reedy banks and shallow reaches of the Avon!’ she thought,
+her heart yearning for home.
+
+Then with bowed head she bent over her oars, and the light boat shot
+away across the wake of a passing steamer; it shot away, far away to
+the middle of the lake; it vanished like a feather blown by a summer
+breeze; and it never came back again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The empty boat drifted ashore at Evian in the gray light of morning,
+while Gerald Goring, with a couple of Swiss boatmen, was rowing about
+the lake, stopping to make inquiries at every landing-place, sending
+scouts in every direction, in quest of that missing craft. No one ever
+knew, no one dared to guess, how it had happened: but every one knew
+that in some dark spot below that deep blue water Daphne was at rest.
+The dog had been down by the boat-house all night, howling fitfully
+through the dark silent hours. He had not left the spot since Daphne’s
+boat glided away from the steps.
+
+It had been a night of anguish and terror for all that household at
+Montreux—a night of agitation, of alternations of hope and fear. Even
+Sir Vernon was profoundly moved by anxiety about the daughter to whom
+he had given so little of his love. He knew that he had been hard and
+merciless in that last interview. He had thought only of Madoline; and
+the knowledge that Madoline had been wronged—that the elder sister’s
+love had been tempted to falsehood by the arts and coquetries of the
+younger sister—had stung him to a frenzy of anger. Nothing could be
+too bad for the ingrate who had sinned against the best of sisters. He
+was too hard a man to give the sinner the benefit of the doubt, and
+to believe that she had sinned unconsciously. In his mind Daphne had
+wickedly and deliberately corrupted the heart of her sister’s affianced
+husband. Angry as he had felt with Gerald, his indignation against the
+weaker vessel was fiercer than his wrath against the stronger.
+
+Mowser had told her story with truth as to the main facts; but with
+such embellishments and heightened colouring as made Daphne appear
+the boldest and most depraved of her sex. In Mowser’s version of that
+scene in the pine-wood there was no hint of temptation resisted, of
+a noble soul struggling with an unworthy passion, of a tender heart
+trying to be faithful to sisterly affection, while every impulse of a
+passionate love tugged the other way. All Mowser could tell was that
+Miss Daphne had sobbed in Mr. Goring’s arms, that he had kissed her,
+as she, Mowser, had never been kissed, although she had kept company
+and been on the brink of marriage with a builder’s foreman; and that
+they had talked of being married at Geneva—leastways Mr. Goring had
+asked Miss Daphne to run away with him for that purpose, and she
+had not said no, but had only begged him to give her twenty-four
+hours—naturally requiring that time to pack her clothes and make all
+needful preparation for flight.
+
+Passionately attached to his elder daughter, and always ready to think
+evil of Daphne, Sir Vernon needed no confirmation of Mowser’s story.
+It was only the realisation of what he always feared—the mother’s
+falsehood showing itself in the daughter—hereditary baseness. It was
+the girl’s nature to betray. She had all her mother’s outward graces
+and too fascinating prettiness. How could he have hoped that she would
+have any higher notions of truth and honour?
+
+Moved to deepest wrath at the wrong done to Madoline, Sir Vernon’s
+first impulse had been to send for Gerald Goring, in order to come
+to an immediate understanding with that offender. He was told that
+Mr. Goring had gone to Geneva, and was not expected home before eight
+o’clock. He then sent for Edgar, and to that unhappy lover bluntly
+and almost brutally related the story of Daphne’s baseness. Edgar was
+inclined to disbelieve, nay, even to laugh Mowser’s slander to scorn;
+but Mowser, summoned to a second interview, stuck resolutely to her
+text, and was not to be shaken.
+
+‘I can’t believe it,’ faltered Edgar, stricken to the heart, ‘unless I
+hear it from her own lips.’
+
+‘Go and fetch her,’ said Sir Vernon to Mowser, and then had followed
+Daphne’s appearance, and those admissions of hers which told Edgar only
+too clearly how he had been deceived.
+
+The two men, Gerald and Edgar, passed each other on the railway between
+Lausanne and Geneva—Edgar on his way to the city, Gerald going back to
+Montreux. Mr. Goring wondered at seeing his friend’s pale face glide
+slowly by as the two trains crossed at the junction.
+
+‘It looks as if she had given him his quietus already,’ he said to
+himself. ‘My brave little Daphne!’
+
+He was going back to Montreux with his heart full of hope and gladness.
+He had taken all the needful measures at Geneva to make his marriage
+with Daphne an easy matter, would she but consent to marry him. And
+he had no doubt of her consent. Could a girl love as she loved, and
+obstinately withhold herself from her lover?
+
+He forgot the pain he must inflict on one who had been so dear; forgot
+the woman who had been the guiding star of his boyhood and youth;
+forget everything except that one consummate bliss which he longed
+for—the triumph of a passionate love. That crown of life once snatched
+from reluctant Fate, all other things would come right in time.
+Madoline’s gentle nature would forgive a wrong which was the work of
+destiny rather than of man’s falsehood. Sir Vernon would be angry and
+unpleasant, no doubt; but Gerald Goring cared very little about Sir
+Vernon. The world would wonder; but Gerald cared nothing for the world.
+He only desired Daphne, and Daphne’s love; having all other good things
+which life, looked at from the worldling’s standpoint, could give.
+
+The sun was setting as he approached Montreux, and all the lake was
+clothed in golden light. Rose-hued mountains, golden water, smiled at
+him as if in welcome.
+
+‘What a lovely world it is!’ he said to himself; ‘and how happy Daphne
+and I will be in it—in spite of Fate and metaphysical aid. There I go,
+quoting the Inevitable, as usual!’
+
+He walked quickly from the station to the villa, eager to see Daphne,
+to hear her voice, to touch the warm soft hand, and be assured that
+there was such a being, and that he had not been the dupe of some
+vision of intangible loveliness, as Shelley’s Alastor was in the
+cavern. That last look of Daphne’s haunted him—so direct, so solemn a
+gaze, so unlike the shy glance of conscious love. Nay, it resembled
+rather the look of some departed spirit, returning from Pluto’s drear
+abode to take its last fond farewell of the living.
+
+The vestibule stood open to the road, an outer hall filled with plants
+and flowers, an airy Italian-looking entrance. Gerald walked straight
+in, and to the drawing-room. It was striking eight as he entered.
+
+‘I hope you won’t wait for me,’ he began, looking round for Daphne;
+‘I am a dusty object, and I don’t think I can make myself presentable
+under twenty minutes. The train dawdled abominably.’
+
+Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were standing by the open window, looking
+out. Lina turned, and at the first glimpse of her pale face Gerald
+knew that there was something wrong. There had been a scene, perhaps,
+between the sisters. Daphne had betrayed herself and him. Well! The
+truth must be told very soon now. It were best to precipitate matters.
+
+‘We are frightened about Daphne,’ said Lina; ‘she went out in her boat
+a little before five—the gardener saw her leave—and she has not come
+back yet.’
+
+Three hours. It was long, but she was fond of solitary excursions on
+the lake.
+
+‘I don’t think there is much cause for alarm in that,’ he said, trying
+to speak lightly, yet with a strange terror at his heart. ‘Shall I get
+a boat and go after her? I had better, perhaps; she cannot be very far
+off—dawdling about by Chillon, I daresay. Those dank stone walls have a
+fascination for her.’
+
+‘Yes, I shall be glad, if you don’t mind going. My father seems uneasy.
+It is so strange that she should stay away three hours without leaving
+word where she was going. Edgar is out. My aunt and I have not known
+what to do, and when I told my father just now he looked dreadfully
+alarmed.’
+
+‘I will go this instant, and not come back till I have found her,’
+answered Gerald huskily.
+
+That last look of Daphne’s was in his mind. That never-to-be-forgotten
+look from her dark eyes lifted fearlessly, with sad and steady gaze.
+
+‘Oh God! did it mean farewell?’
+
+He was out on the lake all night, with two of the most experienced
+boatmen in the district, and it was only in the gray of morning that he
+heard of the empty boat blown ashore a little below Evian—Evian, where
+they had landed so merrily once from the same cockleshell boat, on a
+sunny morning, for a pilgrimage to a drowsy village on the hills, a
+cluster of picturesque homesteads sheltered by patriarchal walnut and
+chestnut trees, where looking downward through the rich foliage they
+saw the blue lake below.
+
+The evening had been calm. There had been no accident or collision of
+any kind on the lake; the little boat showed no sign of injury. It lay
+on the shingly shore, just as the fishermen had pulled it in; an empty
+boat. That was all.
+
+Gerald stayed at Evian, and from Evian wrote briefly to Madoline
+telling her all.
+
+‘My life for the last six months has been a tissue of lies,’ he wrote;
+‘and yet, God knows, I have tried to be true and honest, just as she
+tried; but she with more purpose, yes, poor child! with much more
+fidelity than mine. I wanted to tell you the truth when we were at
+Fribourg, to make an end of all shams and deceptions, but she would not
+let me. She meant to hold to her bond with Edgar—to be true to you. She
+would have persevered in this to the end, if I had let her. But I would
+not, and she has died rather than do you a wrong; it is my guilt—mine
+alone. The brand of Cain is on me: and, like Cain, I shall be a
+wanderer till I die. I do not ask you to forgive me, for I shall never
+forgive myself; or to pity me, for mine is a grief which pity cannot
+touch. If I could hope that you could ever forget me there would be
+comfort in the thought; but I dare not hope for that. You might forget
+your false lover, but how can you forget Daphne’s murderer?’
+
+To this letter Madoline answered briefly: ‘You have broken my sister’s
+heart and mine. A little honesty, a little truth, would have spared us
+both. You might have been happy in your own way, and I might have kept
+my sister. You are right—I can neither forget nor forgive. I thought
+till this trouble came upon me that I was a Christian; I know now, God
+help me! how far I am away from Christian feeling. All I can hope or
+pray about you is that we two may never see each other’s face again. I
+send you Daphne’s legacy.’
+
+Enclosed in the letter was the little packet containing the turquoise
+ring, with ‘For Mr. Goring’ written on the cover in Daphne’s dashing
+penmanship. The hand had not trembled, though the heart beat high, when
+that superscription was penned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sir Vernon stayed at Montreux for more than a month after that fatal
+summer day, though the very sight of lake and mountain in their
+inexorable beauty, so remote from all human trouble or human pity,
+was terrible to him. Madoline urged him to stay. There were hours in
+which, after many tears and many prayers, faint gleams of hope visited
+her sorrowful soul. Daphne might not be dead. She might have landed
+unnoticed at one of those quiet villages, and made her way to some
+distant place where she could live hidden and unknown. Those farewell
+gifts left in her desk must needs mean a deliberate departure: but they
+need not mean death. She might be hiding somewhere, little knowing the
+agony she was inflicting on those who had loved her, fearing only to be
+found and taken home. Madoline could fancy her sister self-sacrificing
+enough to live apart from home and kindred all her days, to earn her
+bread in a stranger’s house. Oh, if it were thus only, and not that
+other and awful fate—a young life flung away in its flower, a young
+soul going forth unbidden to meet God’s judgment, burdened with the
+deadly sin of self-murder!
+
+‘Let us stay a few days longer, father,’ she pleaded. ‘We may hear
+something. There may be some good news.’
+
+‘God grant that it may be so,’ answered Sir Vernon, without a ray of
+hope.
+
+What of his remorse whose hardness had pressed so heavily upon his
+child in that last hour of her brief life, whose bitter words had
+perhaps confirmed the sinner in her desperate resolve, making it very
+clear to her that this earth held no peaceful haven, that for her there
+was no fatherly breast on which she could pour out the story of her
+weakness and her struggle—no friend with the father’s sacred name from
+whom she could ask counsel or seek protection? Alone in her misery, she
+had sought the one refuge which remained for her—death; believing that
+by that fatal deed she would secure her sister’s peace.
+
+‘His heart will return to its truer nobler love when I am gone,’
+she said to herself. Poor shallow soul, unsustained by any deep
+sense of religion, or by any firm principle; tender heart, strong in
+unquestioning fidelity. It was easy to follow out the train of false
+reasoning which made her believe that death would be best; that in
+throwing away her fair young life she was making a sacrifice to love
+and honour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They remained at Montreux till the beginning of October, till autumnal
+tints were stealing over the landscape, and the happy vintage-time had
+begun, making all those gentle slopes alive with picturesque figures,
+every turn in the road a scene for a painter. It was a dreary time
+for Madoline and her father. Edgar was with them; called back from
+Geneva by a telegram on the night of Daphne’s disappearance. He, like
+his rival, had been unweary in his endeavour to obtain some knowledge
+of Daphne’s fate. He had been from village to village, had made his
+inquiries at every landing-place along the lake—had availed himself
+of every local intelligence; but all to no purpose. One of the Vevey
+boatmen had seen Daphne’s light skiff as she rowed swiftly towards
+the middle of the lake. He saw the little boat dancing in the wake of
+a steamer, watched it and its girl-owner till it floated into smooth
+water, and then saw the boat never more.
+
+There had been no reason for an accident upon that particular
+afternoon; no sudden gust of wind; no mysterious rising of the lake;
+nothing. In a sultry calm the little boat had last been seen gliding
+smoothly over the smooth blue water.
+
+Had she rowed to the end of the lake, where the tumultuous Rhone rushes
+in from rocky St. Maurice, and been swamped by those turbid waters? Who
+could tell? The stranded boat bore no sign of having been under water.
+
+The time came when they must go back, when to remain any longer by the
+lake seemed mere foolishness, a persistent brooding upon sorrow; more
+especially as Sir Vernon’s health had become much worse since this
+calamity had fallen upon him, and a change of some kind was imperative.
+
+Aunt Rhoda had gone home a week after the fatal day, though to the last
+expressing herself willing to remain and comfort Madoline.
+
+‘You are very kind, Aunt, but you could not comfort me. You did not
+care for her,’ Lina answered, with a touch of bitterness.
+
+So Mrs. Ferrers, aggrieved at this rebuff, had gone back to her Rector,
+whom she found more painfully affected by Daphne’s evil fate than she
+thought consistent with his clerical character.
+
+‘I shall never look at the garden in summer-time without thinking of
+that bright face and girlish figure flitting about among the roses,
+as I have seen her in the days that are gone,’ he said; ‘a man of my
+age is uncomfortably reminded of his shortening lease of life when the
+young are taken before him.’
+
+And now that bitter day came upon which Madoline was obliged to leave
+the banks of the fatal lake, and turn her sad face homewards, to South
+Hill. South Hill without Daphne, without Gerald—those two familiar
+figures gone out of her life for ever; the house empty of laughter and
+gladness for evermore! All the sweetest things of life proved false,
+every hope crushed, every possibility of future happiness gone from her
+for ever! She could imagine no new hopes, no fresh beginning of life.
+To do her duty to an invalid father; to use her ample fortune for the
+comfort and advantage of the friendless and the needy, was all that
+remained to her; a narrow round of daily tasks not less monotonous than
+the humblest char’s, because she wore a silk gown and lived in a fine
+house. So far her prayer had been granted. She and Gerald Goring had
+never met since Daphne’s death. He had been heard of at Evian and then
+at Vevey; but none of the South Hill people had seen him.
+
+Edgar went back with them, a man so changed by grief that it would be
+hard for the mother, who had seen him go forth in the strength and
+gladness of happy youth, to recognise the haggard hopeless countenance
+of the son who returned to her. He had borne his trouble bravely,
+asking comfort from no one, anxious to console others whenever
+consolation seemed possible. He had tried his best to persuade Madoline
+that Daphne’s boat had been overturned by the current, that the sweet
+young life had been lost by accident. Those carefully-sealed packets in
+the desk hinted at a darker doom; yet it might be that they had been
+prepared by Daphne under some vague idea of leaving home, in order to
+escape the difficulties of her position; an intention to be carried out
+at some indefinite time.
+
+Hawksyard in the autumn, with white vapours stealing over the
+low meadows at sunrise and sunset, with the large leaves of the
+walnut-trees drifting heavily down, seemed a fitting place for a man
+to nurse his grief and meditate upon the greatness of his loss. Edgar
+roamed about the gardens and the fields like an unquiet spirit, or rode
+for long hours in the lonely lanes, keeping as much as possible aloof
+from all who knew him. Even the approach of the hunting season gave him
+no pleasure.
+
+‘I shall not hunt this year,’ he told his mother. ‘Indeed I doubt if I
+shall ever follow the hounds again.’
+
+‘Don’t say that, Edgar,’ cried Mrs. Turchill plaintively. ‘Wretched
+as I am every day you are out with the hounds, I should be still more
+miserable if you were to deprive yourself of your favourite amusement.
+But you will think differently next October, I hope, dear. It isn’t
+natural for young people to go on grieving for ever.’
+
+‘Isn’t it, mother?’ asked her son bitterly. ‘Isn’t it natural for a
+watch to stop when its mainspring is broken?’
+
+The application of this inquiry was beyond Mrs. Turchill, so she made
+no attempt to answer it.
+
+She had been very good to her son since his sorrowful home-coming, not
+tormenting him with futile consolations, but offering him that silent
+sympathy which has always healing in it. Of Daphne’s fate she knew no
+more than that the girl had gone out on the lake one sunny afternoon
+and had never come back again. The announcement in _The Times_ had
+said: ‘Accidentally drowned in the Lake of Geneva,’ and Mrs. Turchill
+had never thought of seeking to know more. But she was much exercised
+in her mind as the autumn wore into winter at the prolonged absence of
+Gerald Goring.
+
+‘Why does not Mr. Goring come back?’ she inquired of Edgar. ‘I should
+think poor Miss Lawford must need his society now more than ever. It is
+natural that the wedding should be postponed for a few months; but Mr.
+Goring ought not to be away.’
+
+‘That engagement is broken off, mother,’ her son answered briefly.
+
+‘Broken off! But why?’
+
+‘I can’t tell you. That concerns no one but Miss Lawford and Mr.
+Goring. Don’t trouble about it, mother.’
+
+At any other time Mrs. Turchill would have troubled very much about
+such a piece of intelligence, would have insisted upon knowing the
+rights and wrongs of the matter, and of expatiating upon it at her
+leisure. But her respect for Edgar’s grief made her very discreet; and
+seeing that the subject was painful to him, she said no more about
+it No more to him, that is to say, but very much more to Deborah, to
+whom she discoursed freely upon the extraordinary fact, delicately
+suggesting that as Deborah was on intimate terms with the upper
+servants at South Hill, she would no doubt hear all the ins and outs of
+the story in due time.
+
+‘I should be the last person to encourage gossip,’ remarked the matron
+with dignity, ‘but there are some things which people cannot help
+talking about, especially where a young lady is as much beloved and
+respected as Miss Lawford.’
+
+Deborah went to South Hill on her next Sunday out, and drank tea in the
+housekeeper’s room, where Mrs. Spicer, though unable to speak with dry
+eyes of Miss Daphne, was nevertheless much interested in the fit and
+fashion of her black gown, the quality of which Deborah both appraised
+and admired. But Mrs. Spicer only knew that Miss Lawford’s engagement
+was broken off. She knew nothing as to the why and the wherefore, but
+she surmised, somewhat vaguely, that Miss Lawford had turned against
+Mr. Goring after her sister’s death.
+
+Only one of the South Hill servants could have explained the cause of
+that cancelled engagement, and she had been dismissed with a handsome
+pension, and had gone to live in the outskirts of Birmingham, with her
+own kith and kin. Sir Vernon could never endure the presence of the
+faithful Mowser after Daphne’s death. ‘You did your duty, according to
+your lights, I have no doubt,’ he said, when he sent her away; ‘but I
+can never look at you without regretting that you did not hold your
+tongue. You have told Miss Lawford nothing—about—that scene in the
+pine-wood, I hope?’
+
+Mowser protested that she would have had her tongue cut out rather than
+speak one such word to her mistress.
+
+‘I am glad of that. She knows too much already—enough to make her life
+miserable. We must spare her what pain we can.’
+
+Mowser assented, with a convulsion of her elderly throat, which looked
+like a repressed sob. The pension promised was liberal; but it was a
+hard thing to be dismissed, to be told that life at South Hill could be
+carried on without her.
+
+‘I don’t know what Miss Lawford will do when I’m gone,’ she faltered
+tearfully; ‘I’m used to her ways, and she’s used to mine. A strange
+maid will seem like an antelope to her.’
+
+Sir Vernon stared, but did not deign to discuss the probabilities as
+to his daughter’s feelings. He ordered Jinman—who on the strength
+of knowing two or three dozen substantives in French and Italian,
+considered himself an accomplished linguist—to conduct Mrs. Mowser to
+Geneva, and to book her through, so far as it were possible, to her
+native shores. He felt that he could breathe more freely when that evil
+presence was out of the house. ‘She provoked me to torture that poor
+child in her last hour upon earth,’ he thought. ‘She maddened me with
+the idea that Lina’s lover had been stolen from her.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+‘SENS LOVE HATH BROUGHT US TO THIS PITEOUS END.’
+
+FROM THE REV. JULIAN TEMPLE TO MISS AYLMER.
+
+
+  ‘Schaffhausen, September 11th, 187—.
+
+  ‘MY DEAR FLORA,
+
+‘You ask me for a detailed account of the melancholy accident on the
+Matterhorn, of which I had the misfortune to be an eye-witness, and
+the memory of which will haunt me for years to come—yes, even in that
+blessed time when I shall be quietly settled down in domestic life
+with my dear girl, and must needs have a thousand reasons for being
+completely happy.
+
+‘I kept you so well posted in my movements, until the occurrence of
+this unhappy event made it painful to me to write about our Alpine
+experiences, that you no doubt remember how Trevor and I, after our
+successful attempt upon the Finsteraarhorn, made our way quietly down
+to Zermatt, by way of Thun and Vispach. Never shall I forget the
+calm delight of the last day’s walk between Vispach and Zermatt. The
+distance is only thirty miles, we were in high spirits and in excellent
+condition for the tramp, and we had a cart for our mountaineering gear,
+and our knapsacks, so were able to take things easily.
+
+‘We started at six o’clock, breakfasted at St. Nicolas, and reached
+Zermatt early in the evening. Our road—a mule-path for the greater part
+of the way—led us through scenes of infinite variety, and opened to us
+views of surpassing grandeur and beauty. Amidst all the wildness of
+a mountainous landscape we were struck with the profusion of flowers
+which gave life and colour to the foreground, and the wild fruits
+which rivalled the flowers in their vivid beauty; beds of Alpine
+strawberries, thickets of raspberries and barberries, bordered the
+path, and every village we entered lay sheltered amidst patriarchal
+walnut or chestnut trees.
+
+‘How can I describe to you the glory of the Matterhorn, as that
+mighty monolith reveals itself for the first time to the eve of
+the traveller?—an obelisk of dazzling whiteness cleaving the blue
+sky, blanking out earth and heaven with its gigantic form, the one
+mountain-peak which reigns supreme in a kingly solitude, not lifting
+his proud head from a group of brother peaks, not buttressed by
+inferior hills, but solitary as the Prince of Darkness, a being apart
+and alone. Mont Blanc overawes by massive grandeur, but I should choose
+the Matterhorn for the monarch of mountains.
+
+‘The sun was setting as we crossed the Visp for the last time before
+entering Zermatt. Trevor and I had been in the gayest spirits
+throughout our journey. We had rested two hours at St. Nicolas, and
+had taken a leisurely luncheon at Randa. We were full of talk about
+the day after to-morrow, which date we had chosen for our attempt on
+the Matterhorn, thinking it wise to give ourselves a day’s rest, or at
+least partial rest, after our thirty miles’ walk, and to leave time for
+engaging guides and making all necessary preparations in a leisurely
+manner.
+
+‘Trevor was a stranger to the district, but he had done much good work
+on Mont Blanc, and he had behaved so well on the Finsteraarhorn that I
+had no doubt of his mettle. I had familiarised myself with the Monte
+Rosa group three years before, and I knew the Zermatt guides and their
+ways and manners. We interviewed some of these gentry after our dinner,
+and I picked two of the sturdiest and trustiest, made my bargain with
+them, and told them to examine our ropes and other gear carefully by
+daylight next morning.
+
+‘We had a pleasant evening, sauntering about the quiet little town in
+the light of a glorious full moon, smoking our cigars, talking of our
+future prospects, of the Church, and of you. Yes, dear love, Trevor is
+just one of those faithful souls with whom a man can talk about his
+sweetheart.
+
+‘Next morning we breakfasted at daybreak and started luxuriously on
+a brace of mules for the Riffelberg, to reconnoitre our mountain.
+How grand and beautiful was the circle of snow-clad peaks which we
+beheld from that dark hillside: Monte Rosa on the south-east, on the
+south-west the Matterhorn, on the east, the Cima de Jassi, to the
+west the Dent Blanche, to the north-eastward the Dom, and westward
+the Weisshorn—gigantic crags and domes and solitary peaks, all bathed
+in sunshine, and as dazzling in their glorified whiteness as the sun
+himself! We spent some hours in quiet contemplation of that sublime
+and awful scene gazing at that circle of Titanic peaks, which had a
+sphinx-like and mysterious air as they looked back at us in their dumb
+unapproachable majesty.
+
+‘“Is it not a kind of blasphemy to pollute them with our footsteps, to
+be always trying to get nearer and nearer to them, into Nature’s Holy
+of Holies?”’ I asked, carried away by the grandeur of the scene.
+
+‘But Trevor’s manner of look at the question was practical rather than
+imaginative.
+
+‘“I shouldn’t like to go back without having done the Matterhorn,” he
+said, “though the terrible accident a few years ago makes one inclined
+to be cautious.”
+
+‘We had a rough-and-ready luncheon on the Rothe Kumm, and took our time
+about the descent. It was nearly dark when we got back to Zermatt.
+The _table-d’hôte_ dinner was over, and we dined together at a small
+table in a corner of the coffee-room, a table near a window, that stood
+open to a verandah. As we took our seats we noticed that there was a
+gentleman sitting smoking a little way from the window. I sat facing
+him, and as we began dinner he asked politely whether his cigar annoyed
+us. This broke the ice, and he began to talk of our intended ascent,
+which he had heard of from the guides.
+
+‘“I should very much like to join you,” he said. “We could take another
+guide if you think it advisable. I am used to Alpine climbing. I came
+here on purpose to ascend the Matterhorn, and I shall do it in any
+case; but it would be pleasant to have congenial company,” he added,
+with a light laugh.
+
+‘“Pleasant for us as well as for you,” I replied, for there was
+something particularly winning in his manner; “but you must not
+consider me impertinent if I say that you hardly seem in strong enough
+health for mountain climbing. You look as if you had not long recovered
+from a severe illness.”
+
+‘“Do I?” he asked, in the same light tone; “I was always a sallow
+individual. No, I have not been ill; and I am sinewy and wiry enough
+for pretty hard work in the climbing way, though I have no superfluous
+flesh. I don’t think you’ll find me an encumbrance to you; but if you
+have any doubt upon the subject you can ask your chief guide, Peter
+Hirsch, for my character, He and I have done same pretty rapid ascents
+together in past years.”
+
+‘He handed me his card. “Mr. Goring, Goring Abbey, Warwickshire.”
+
+‘There was nothing of the braggart about him, and I had no doubt as
+to his Alpine experience, but I could not dispossess myself of the
+idea that he was in weak health, and out of condition for a fatiguing
+ascent; for though the approach to the Matterhorn has been made much
+easier than it was in ’65, when it was ascended for the first time by
+Mr. Whymper and three other gentlemen, with most lamentable results, it
+is still a toughish piece of work.
+
+‘I heard a good deal of Mr. Goring later from our landlord; he was well
+known in the district, and known as an experienced mountaineer. He was
+a man of large wealth, very generous, very good to the poor. He had
+been living in Switzerland for the past year, shifting from town to
+town along the banks of Lake Leman, but never leaving the shores of the
+lake, until a few weeks ago, when he set out on a walking expedition
+to Italy. He had stopped at Zermatt on his way southward; had idled
+away his days in a listless purposeless way; now doing a little
+climbing, now spending whole days lying about in the woods, with his
+books and his sketching materials. He kept himself as much aloof from
+the tourists as it was possible for him to do, occupying his own rooms,
+and never dining at the _table-d’hôte_; and the landlord was surprised
+that he should wish to join our party. His story was at once romantic
+and tragical. He had come to Montreux with the family of the young lady
+to whom he was engaged. This young lady was accidentally drowned in
+the lake last summer, and Mr. Goring had never left the scene of her
+untimely death till he came to Zermatt.
+
+‘I asked the landlord if there was any fear of his mind being affected
+by this trouble, and he assured me that there was not the slightest
+ground for such an idea. Mr. Goring kept himself to himself; but he
+was as rational and as clever a man to talk to as any gentleman the
+landlord had ever known.
+
+‘This settled the matter. To make assurance doubly sure I engaged a
+third guide, and a young man to help in carrying tents, ropes, etc.,
+and we set out, a little party of seven, gaily enough, in the early
+morning. We meant to take things quietly, and to spend the first night
+in the tent, or in blanket-bags, if the weather were as mild as it
+promised to be. We carried provisions enough to last for three days,
+in case the ascent should take even longer than we anticipated. We
+took sketching materials, a tin box for any botanical or entomological
+specimens we might collect, and two or three well-worn volumes of
+poetry which had accompanied us in all our excursions, but had not been
+largely read. The great and varied book of Nature had generally proved
+all-sufficient.
+
+‘We left Zermatt soon after five, the Lac Noir between eight and nine,
+and a little before noon we had chosen our spot for a camping-place,
+eleven thousand feet high, and the men set to work making a platform
+for the tent, while we took our ease on the mountain, basking in
+the sunshine, sketching, collecting a little, and talking a great
+deal. We found Mr. Goring a delightful companion. He was a man of
+considerable culture; had travelled much and read much. There was a
+dash of nineteenth-century cynicism in his talk, and it was but too
+easy to see that his view of this life and the world beyond it was of
+that sombre hue which so deeply overshadows modern thought. Still he
+was a most agreeable companion; and Trevor told me more than once, in a
+confidential aside, that our new acquaintance was a decided acquisition.
+
+‘In all our conversation, which was perfectly unreserved on all sides,
+it was noticeable that Mr. Goring talked very little of himself or of
+his own affairs. He spoke vaguely of an idea of going on to Italy, and
+wintering at Naples, but rather as an intention he had entertained and
+abandoned, than as one which he meant to carry out.
+
+‘I ventured to say that I should have thought that, for a man of his
+culture, Paris or Berlin would have been a pleasanter wintering-place;
+but he shrugged his shoulders and declared that he detested both these
+cities, and the society to be found in them. “French charlatanism or
+German pedantry,” he said, “God knows which is worse.”
+
+‘There was a magnificent sunset. Never shall I forget the awful beauty
+of the sky and mountains as we watched the decline of that ineffable
+glory—watched in silence, subdued to gravity by the unspeakable
+grandeur of that mighty panorama, in the midst of which our own
+littleness was brought painfully home to our minds.
+
+‘The night was singularly mild, and we preferred sleeping in our
+blanket-bags to the stuffy atmosphere of a tent.
+
+‘We were up before daybreak next morning, and breakfasted merrily
+enough by the light of the stars, which were dropping out of the purple
+sky, like lamps burned out, as the colder light of day crept slowly
+along the edges of the eastward snow-peaks—such a livid ghastly light.
+I remember wondering at Mr. Goring’s good spirits, which seemed by no
+means to accord with the landlord’s account of him. Had there been
+anything forced or hysterical about his gaiety I should have taken
+alarm: but nothing could be easier or more natural than his manner;
+and I was pleased to think that, however deeply he might regret the
+poor girl whom he had lost by so sad a fate, he had his hours of
+forgetfulness and tranquillity.
+
+‘We made the ascent slowly but easily, our guides seeing no risk from
+any quarter; and between one and two o’clock we stood on the top of
+that peak which of all others had most impressed me by its grand air
+of solitude and inaccessibility. Throughout the ascent Mr. Goring had
+shown himself a skilful and experienced mountaineer; and there was no
+thought further from my mind than the apprehension of hazard to him
+more than to anyone of us in the descent, or of recklessness on his
+part.
+
+‘We stayed on the summit a little over an hour, and then prepared
+ourselves for the descent. There were some difficult bits to be passed
+in going down, and it was suggested by the most experienced of the
+guides that we should be all roped together with the stoutest of our
+Alpine-Club ropes. But this Mr. Goring negatived. “Where there is only
+one rope, a false step for one means death to all,” he said. “It was
+that which caused the calamity in Mr. Whymper’s descent; if the rope
+had not broken there would not have been a man left to tell the story
+of that fatal day.” At his urgent request we formed ourselves into
+three parties, each of the guides being roped to one of us. He chose
+the least experienced of the three men, and he, with this youngest of
+the guides, went first.
+
+‘“You need not be afraid about me,” he said cheerily. “I am as
+sure-footed as the best guide in Zermatt.”
+
+‘The two men who were with us assented heartily to this, and my own
+observation went far to assure me that Mr. Goring’s assertion was no
+idle boast.
+
+‘Those were the last words I ever heard him speak. We were all intent
+upon the descent, the guides cutting footsteps now and then in the ice.
+There was neither inclination nor opportunity for much talk of any
+kind. Mr. Goring and his companion moved more quickly than we did; and
+I began to fear, as I saw the two dark figures ever so far below us
+amidst the dazzling whiteness, that there was a dash of recklessness in
+him after all.
+
+‘This made me feel uneasy, and I found my attention wandering from my
+own position, which was not without peril, to those two in advance
+of us. Suddenly, to my surprise, I saw Goring change places with the
+guide, who until this moment had been foremost. I saw also in the same
+instant that the rope which had been hanging somewhat loosely between
+them a minute or so before—always a source of danger—was now tightly
+braced. It seemed to me that Goring stood still for a moment or two,
+looking down the sheer precipice that yawned on one side of him, as if
+admiring the awful grandeur of the abyss, then I saw a sharp sudden
+movement of his right arm; there was a cry from the guide, and in the
+next moment a dark figure slid with a fearful velocity along the smooth
+whiteness of the frozen snow, and then shot over the edge, and dropped
+from precipice to precipice to the Matterhorn glacier below, a distance
+of nearly four thousand feet. How the guide contrived to maintain his
+footing in that awful moment I know not. He never could have done it
+had the rope been slack before it broke—or was severed. In those last
+words lies the saddest part of the story. It is the guide’s opinion,
+and mine, that the rope was deliberately cut by Mr. Goring. He could
+scarcely have done this all at once by one movement of his knife; but
+the guide believes that he had contrived to cut it three parts through,
+unobserved by him, in the course of the descent. I asked how it came
+about that he and the guide changed places, and the young man told me
+that it was at Mr. Goring’s desire, a desire so calmly and naturally
+expressed that it had occasioned neither wonder nor alarm.
+
+‘His body has not been found, though the people of Zermatt have been
+diligent in their search. He lies locked in his frozen tomb in some
+crevasse of the glacier.
+
+‘A very beautiful marble cross has been erected to his memory in the
+little churchyard at Zermatt. I am told that it exactly resembles one
+that was placed last year in the churchyard at Montreux, in memory of
+the young lady who was drowned in the lake near that town.
+
+‘It may interest you to know that Mr. Goring’s will bequeaths the whole
+of his enormous fortune to the elder sister of this unfortunate lady,
+the testator being assured that she will make a much more noble use of
+that fortune than he could ever have done.
+
+‘Those are the words of the legacy.’
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+  LONDON:
+  PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
+  STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
+
+
+
+
+MISS BRADDON’S NEW NOVEL.
+
+MOUNT ROYAL
+
+Opinions of the Press.
+
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is a very readable book, and the interest is sustained
+by the _dénouement_ being left in doubt to the very end of the
+penultimate chapter.’—_Times._
+
+‘Miss Braddon’s numerous admirers can hardly fail to have been struck
+by the remarkable advance shown by her most recent novels, not only
+in point of style, but in the natural delineation of those phases
+of modern society which no living writer of fiction treats more
+agreeably or with more sustained power. The most striking instance
+of this may, perhaps, be found in “Vixen;” and if the present work
+is not superior to that charming tale—which would involve excellence
+of an unexceptionally high order—it will, at least, not suffer from
+comparison with its predecessor. The plot will be preferred by many,
+as dealing with the more tragic side of life, and with more serious
+issues; but, granting that such preference must be a matter of taste,
+all will admit the touch of a master-hand in development of the
+action and the carefully artistic treatment which renders each of the
+_dramatis personæ_, estimable or otherwise, a living sentient being,
+with human idiosyncrasies and distinct personality.... The scene, by
+the bye, in which this episode occurs is unquestionably one of the
+finest and most dramatic that even Miss Braddon has ever written, and
+is only to be surpassed in point of intensity by the two still finer
+interviews between Leonard and his wife, and the remorseful woman and
+her intended tool, the adventurer De Cazalet.... We may say, without
+hesitation, that Miss Braddon has never employed her great talents
+to better purpose than in “Mount Royal.” It is the worthy work of a
+thorough artist.’—_Morning Post._
+
+‘Miss Braddon’s ever-active and ever-fascinating pen has just completed
+a new work of fiction, entitled “Mount Royal.” If it does not appeal as
+immediately and powerfully to the feelings as “Lady Audley’s Secret,”
+or “Lucius Davoren,” or some of the gifted authoress’s more recent
+novels, such as “Vixen,” it is replete with all the freshness and
+charm which she has taught the public to expect from her, which makes
+the book one that will attract by its power as well as charm by its
+style.’—_Daily Telegraph._
+
+‘Miss Braddon has never, in our opinion, written a novel at once more
+clever and more true than this.’—_Morning Advertiser._
+
+‘The interest is unmistakable, and the way in which this is sustained
+from first to last proves that its author’s command of the art of
+storytelling has in no wise diminished.’—_Observer._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is entitled to rank high among our modern works of
+fiction.’—_Society._
+
+‘Miss Braddon has maintained in “Mount Royal” the standard of her later
+period.’—_Athenæum._
+
+‘The story is clearly developed and vigorously written.’—_Pall Mall
+Gazette._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” will not only be found a pleasant sea-side companion
+during the coming season, but a friend in need during many a solitary
+hour in the country. It is not only one of the best ever written by
+the author of “Lady Audley’s Secret,” but one of the most original
+likewise.’—_Court Journal._
+
+‘To return for a last word to “Mount Royal,” the more we have of Miss
+Braddon, and the less of Miss Rhoda Dendron and Weeder, the better, in
+our opinion, for all novel-readers, old and young.’—_Punch._
+
+‘As a novelist, she is almost without a rival in the art of
+plot-weaving; so delicate are her meshes, and so subtle her
+discrimination, that the inherent interest of her books carries us
+along with her. She is the high priest of a school which, since
+she inaugurated it, has had many more or less feeble imitators....
+Painfully and terribly true to life, and rightly understood, “Mount
+Royal” is capable of making us appreciate truth and purity more
+heartily than ever.’—_Evening News._
+
+‘The great body of novel-readers who have for so many years found
+recreation and delight in the brilliant works of imagination which have
+come from the pen of Miss Braddon, will need no inducement to turn to
+a new story by this accomplished authoress.... As is always the case
+in Miss Braddon’s stories, the characters are powerfully drawn. They
+are not merely people of whom we read, but seem to enjoy an actual
+existence during the time that their movements are being followed
+with such rapt attention. The lives of these inhabitants of the old
+Cornish manor-house, known as Mount Royal, are not free from the cares
+and excitement which the world calls sensational, albeit the stronger
+element is made subordinate to gentler and more subtle influences.
+Judged relatively to other works, “Mount Royal” must be awarded a
+place midway between the early impulsiveness of “Lady Audley” and the
+charming fancy displayed in “Vixen,” the novel in which Miss Braddon’s
+maturer style reached its highest excellence.... Readers will find
+in “Mount Royal,” in its pathetic views of life and love, echoes of
+their own experience that are sure to command absorbing interest. Miss
+Braddon’s romantic spirit has been in no way quenched; but in this last
+novel its brighter rays are tempered by experience and the saddening
+influence of earth’s sorrows and troubles.’—_Daily Chronicle._
+
+‘An interesting and clever story. The excitement and expectation
+are well sustained throughout; the incidents are original, and the
+characters are neatly drawn. Miss Braddon has written some delightful
+pictures of scenery in Cornwall.’—_Sunday Times._
+
+‘That Miss Braddon’s hand has not lost its cunning is evidenced by the
+excellent work which she has given us in “Mount Royal.” The same skill
+in construction, the same charm of description as marked her earlier
+efforts, are all here in this present work, matured and mellowed,
+it may be, by experience, but not one whit dulled or destroyed by
+lapse of time. We welcome “Mount Royal.” Miss Braddon has given us a
+story which, while it adds to her fame as an authoress, increases our
+indebtedness to her: the healthy tone of “Mount Royal” is not one of
+its least charms.’—_Pictorial World._
+
+‘For one “who has been long in city pent” the pictures of Cornish
+scenery, drawn by the free bold hand of the authoress, are delightful;
+no landscape-painter could produce a more vivid impression.... We
+anticipate that this powerful tragic story will enhance the high
+reputation of its authoress.’—_Echo._
+
+‘The situations are worked out with so much skill, and the probability
+of details is so well managed, that the story can be followed with the
+keenest interest.’—_St. James’s Gazette._
+
+‘There is much effective writing in the course of the novel, and we
+must add that the minor characters are individualised with all the
+accustomed power of the authoress.’—_News of the World._
+
+‘Miss Braddon never disappoints her readers. Whoever takes up “Mount
+Royal” will be prepared for an interesting story, excellently well
+told, and that they will get. Her scenes never fall flat, nor does
+her weapon ever miss fire. The incidents of her stories are always
+marshalled with very great skill, so as to produce the best effect
+which is to be got from them. In fewer words, Miss Braddon is, as our
+readers know without our telling them, a story-teller of consummate
+ability. To be able to conceive a thrilling plot is one thing; to be
+able to work it out in a story is another. Miss Braddon has from the
+beginning shown that she possesses both these gifts. Her fertility
+in plot-making is nothing short of marvellous; and when we find that
+her conceptions are always worked out by the aid of characters of
+flesh and blood, who stand prominently forth from the canvas, and look
+at you with living eyes, we are lost in wonder at a fancy, a power,
+so inexhaustible. Scarcely ever is there a trace of any strain, any
+fatigue. We might say that she appears to be telling a story for the
+first time, did not the ease and skill displayed in the process betray
+to the close observer a vast amount of practice added to natural
+talents of a high order. Her descriptive power and her dramatic
+instinct are never weakened. She never fails to bring before the reader
+the objects of persons she is describing. Moreover, she can describe
+indirectly as well as directly.’—_Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper._
+
+‘Many of the descriptions of the scenery of Cornwall are well worth
+reading; while London fashionable circles are hit off in a vein of
+satire occasionally, but with a considerable resemblance, we should
+imagine, to what really takes place. The scene where Christabel meets
+Psyche in her own dwelling is full of womanly tenderness, and suggests
+to the poor victim the existence of a world of compassion of which
+she had never dreamed. The marshalling and management also of the
+characters as a whole reveal, it must be admitted, the possession of
+high artistic powers, as well as a wide observation of men and things.
+Major Broe is drawn to the life. Mrs. Tregonell senior, with her
+mother’s fondness for the roving Leonard, is also as true to nature as
+can well be imagined.’—_Liverpool Mercury._
+
+‘Miss Braddon, if not the most industrious of modern novelists, is
+certainly unrivalled in this respect among those whose works are in
+great demand at the circulating libraries. Let the reader once become
+really interested in the fortunes of the lovely, but unhappy, Mrs.
+Tregonell, and he will not willingly put down the book until the end of
+the third volume.’—_Manchester Examiner and Times._
+
+‘We have followed the plot out with considerable interest, and no fault
+is to be found in the novel in the way of dulness.’—_John Bull._
+
+‘The scene in which her new novel is chiefly laid is to the full as
+enchanting as it is painted by her skilful hand. That there is plenty
+to interest and something to excite in any book from the pen of Miss
+Braddon may be taken for granted. The ingenuity of the plot is worthy
+of the author.’—_London Figaro._
+
+‘A most attractive and interesting novel. The genius of Miss Braddon
+evolves a number of most ingenious plots, and the reader’s interest is
+kept engaged through the development of them with absorbing power. Miss
+Braddon deals with persons and places that are familiar to us, and her
+descriptions of the scenery of the north coast, of Tintagel, Boscastle,
+and all the neighboring shores, are photographed with great clearness
+in beautiful language and with perfect knowledge. Miss Braddon’s
+works are always interesting, and these volumes will add to her
+well-established reputation. There are many phases of life described
+in them which we know exist; but there are few who have the power of
+placing either the people or their surroundings so completely before
+us. She hits off admirably the follies and fashions of the hour as they
+prevail in fashionable life. So great was the demand for Miss Braddon’s
+new novel, “Mount Royal,” the other day, that the circulating libraries
+subscribed for the whole of the first edition, and the publisher had to
+go to press immediately with a new impression.’—_Plymouth Western Daily
+Mercury._
+
+‘In “Mount Royal” Miss Braddon appears to us not only to have surpassed
+her own previous performances, numerous and successful as they have
+been, but even to have distanced all her competitors in that class of
+literature. We know of no recent novel which we would place before
+“Mount Royal” in its power of exciting the emotions.’—_Sheffield Post._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is an addition to the Braddon library that will be
+heartily welcomed by all who can appreciate a sound, healthy, and
+thoroughly interesting novel.’—_Belfast News Letter._
+
+‘Taking the novel altogether, “Mount Royal” will compare favourably
+with any that have preceded it from the same pen. In point of character
+delineation and skilfulness of construction, its merits are very
+considerable.’—_Bradford Observer._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is well written, as all Miss Braddon’s books are. It is
+bright, and catches with great accuracy the precise tone of the people
+whose lives are being sketched. A good novel.’—_Scotsman._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is powerful and artistic—a finished bit of
+workmanship.’—_Edinburgh Daily Review._
+
+‘We may fairly say of it that it contains many sparkling passages
+and many happy thoughts. It shows that the writer has an extensive
+acquaintance with the best English authors, and it shows that she is an
+adept in word-painting.’—_Sheffield Daily Telegraph._
+
+‘Miss Braddon’s last production is as engrossing, as dramatic, and as
+fresh as if it were only her second or third. There is not a dull page
+in the three volumes.’—_Brighton Fashionable Visitors’ List._
+
+‘“Mount Royal” is an exceptionally favorable specimen. The story is
+told with singular neatness, and grace almost equally unusual in works
+of this kind. The novel is, without doubt, a good and a bright one,
+with plenty of incidents and plenty of character.’—_Manchester Courier._
+
+‘The story, as a whole, is extremely interesting. It is emphatically
+a novel of the present day, and we predict for it an extensive
+demand.’—_York Herald._
+
+
+
+
+  Transcriber’s Notes
+
+  pg 49 Changed: Miss Dibb made the acqaintance of a strange man
+             to: Miss Dibb made the acquaintance of a strange man
+
+  pg 92 Changed: there is a South Pole, too, isn’t here, dear
+             to: there is a South Pole, too, isn’t there, dear
+
+  pg 109 Changed: She folded the soft wollen wrap
+              to: She folded the soft woollen wrap
+
+  pg 110 Changed: she was still digging and and scraping
+              to: she was still digging and scraping
+
+  pg 112 Changed: the Maltese terrior Fluff in her lap
+              to: the Maltese terrier Fluff in her lap
+
+  pg 138 Changed: There was not even a shrubberry
+              to: There was not even a shrubbery
+
+  pg 188 Changed: see that this luxurions home-education
+              to: see that this luxurious home-education
+
+  pg 220 Changed: and faithful, pious, self-sacricing
+              to: and faithful, pious, self-sacrificing
+
+  pg 235 Changed: the perfact outline of the throat
+              to: the perfect outline of the throat
+
+  pg 235 Changed: hand that lay inhert upon Fluff
+              to: hand that lay inert upon Fluff
+
+  pg 243 Changed: deferred boyond luncheon time
+              to: deferred beyond luncheon time
+
+  pg 255 Changed: toboggining at the Falls of Montmorenci
+              to: tobogganing at the Falls of Montmorenci
+
+  pg 261 Changed: Daphne had never been beyond Fontainbleau
+              to: Daphne had never been beyond Fontainebleau
+
+  pg 270 Changed: surprised if Miss Dapne Lawford
+              to: surprised if Miss Daphne Lawford
+
+  pg 282 Changed: furniture, delf, and china
+              to: furniture, delft, and china
+
+  pg 302 Changed: It was not a grandoise or thrilling ceremonial
+              to: It was not a grandiose or thrilling ceremonial
+
+  pg 321 Changed: That is remakably clever
+              to: That is remarkably clever
+
+  pg 372 Changed: to whom she dicoursed freely upon
+              to: to whom she discoursed freely upon
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75506 ***
diff --git a/75506-h/75506-h.htm b/75506-h/75506-h.htm
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+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Asphodel | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
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+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-variant: normal;
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+
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+
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+
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+
+
+/* Images */
+
+img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    height: auto;
+}
+
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+    page-break-inside: avoid;
+    max-width: 100%;
+}
+
+/* Poetry */
+/* uncomment the next line for centered poetry */
+.poetry-container {display: flex; justify-content: center;}
+.poetry-container {text-align: center; font-size: 85%;}
+.poetry           {text-align: left; margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%;}
+.poetry .stanza   {margin: 1em auto;}
+.poetry .verse    {text-indent: -3em; padding-left: 3em;}
+
+/* Transcriber's notes */
+.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA;
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+    </style>
+</head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75506 ***</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 85%">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h1>ASPHODEL</h1>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs120 bold">A Novel</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs90">BY THE AUTHOR OF</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp">“LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “ISHMAEL,”</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs90">ETC. ETC.</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center no-indent wsp bold">Stereotyped Edition</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs90">LONDON:</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp">SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT &amp; CO., <span class="allsmcap">LIMITED</span>,</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs90">STATIONERS’ HALL COURT</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs90">1890.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs70">[<em>All rights reserved</em>]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter pageborder">
+<p class="center no-indent bold fs150 wsp">MISS BRADDON’S NOVELS.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65">
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp"><span class="smcap">Now Ready at all Booksellers’ and Bookstalls,<br>
+Price</span> 2<em>s.</em> 6<em>d.</em> <span class="smcap">each, Cloth gilt</span>.</p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp">THE AUTHOR’S AUTOGRAPH EDITION
+OF MISS BRADDON’S NOVELS.</p>
+
+<hr class="r65">
+
+<p class="fs80">“No one can be dull who has a novel by Miss Braddon in hand.
+The most tiresome journey is beguiled, and the most wearisome
+illness is brightened, by any one of her books.”</p>
+
+<p class="fs80">“Miss Braddon is the Queen of the circulating libraries.”</p>
+
+<p class="right fs80">
+<cite>The World.</cite><br>
+</p>
+
+<hr class="r65">
+
+<p class="center no-indent">
+<span class="fs80">LONDON:</span><br>
+<span class="fs120">SIMPKIN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Limited,</span></span><br>
+<span class="fs80">Stationers’ Hall Court.<br>
+<em>And at all Railway Bookstalls, Booksellers’, and Libraries.</em></span><br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iii">[Pg iii]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 9%">
+<img src="images/005_deco.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<table class="autotable lh">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr fs70">CHAP.</td>
+<td class="tdl"></td>
+<td class="tdr fs70">PAGE</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">I.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And she was fair as is the Rose in May</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">5</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">II.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And this was gladly in the Eventide</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">15</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">III.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And Volatile, as ay was his usage</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">25</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">IV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Curteis she was, discrete, and debonaire</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">41</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">V.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Thou lovest me, that wot I wel certain</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">52</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">VI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Love maketh all to gone misway</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">64</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">VII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">His Herte bathed in a Bath of Blisse</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">78</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">VIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">God wote that worldly Joy is sone ago</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">89</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">IX.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Of Colour pale and dead was she</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">101</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">X.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And spending Silver had he right ynow</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">111</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Yeve me my Deth, or that I have a Shame</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">123</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And to the Dinner faste they hem spedde</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">133</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">After my Might ful fayne wold I you plese</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">144</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XIV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Love is a Thing, as any Spirit, free</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">154</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Not for your Linage, ne for your Richesse</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">165</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XVI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">No Man may alway have Prosperitee</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XVII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And in my Herte wondren I began</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XVIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Love wol not be constreined by Maistrie</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">194</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XIX.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">I deme that hire Herte was ful of Wo</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">205</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XX.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Al sodenly she swapt adown to Ground</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">216</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">For Wele or Wo, for Carole, or for Daunce</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">227</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">For I wol gladly yelden hire my Place</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">239</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">And come agen, be it by Day or Night</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">250</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXIV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Ay fleth the Time, it wol no Man abide</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">260</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">But I wot best wher wringeth me my Sho</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">271</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXVI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Forbid a Love and it is ten Times so wode</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">285</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_iv">[Pg iv]</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXVII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">I may not don as every Ploughman may</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">295</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXVIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Love is not old, as whan that it is new</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">305</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXIX.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">I meane well, by God that sit above</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">319</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXX.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Ther was no Wight, to whom she durste plain</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">330</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXXI.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">I wolde live in Pees, if that I might</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">342</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXXII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">For Love and not for Hate thou must be ded</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">349</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXXIII.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Is there no Grace? Is there no Remedie?</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">358</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr"><span class="allsmcap">XXXIV.</span></td>
+<td class="tdl">‘<span class="smcap">Sens Love hath brought us to this piteous End</span>’</td>
+<td class="tdr"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">373</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs200">ASPHODEL</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 9%">
+<img src="images/005_deco.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND SHE WAS FAIR AS IS THE ROSE IN MAY.’</span></h2>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">‘Oh</span>, you glorious old Sol, how I love you!’ cried Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>It was a day on which common mortals were almost fainting
+with the heat, puffing and blowing and complaining—a blazing
+midsummer-day; and even here, in the forest of Fontainebleau,
+where the mere idea of innumerable trees was suggestive of
+shadow and coolness, the heat was barely supportable—a heavy
+slumberous heat, loud with the hum of millions of insects, perfumed
+with the breath of a thousand pines.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne revelled in the fierce sunshine—she threw back her
+crest of waving hair, bright as yellow gold, she smiled up at the
+cloudless blue, she looked unwinkingly even at Sol himself, the
+mighty unquenchable king of the sky, glorious yonder in his
+highest heaven.</p>
+
+<p>She was lying at full length on a moss-grown block of stone
+at the top of a hill, which was one of the highest points in the
+forest, a hill-top overlooking on one side a fair sweep of champagne
+country, fertile valleys, church steeples, village roofs,
+vineyards and rose gardens, and winding streams; and on the
+other side, woodlands stretching away into infinite distance,
+darkly purple.</p>
+
+<p>It was the choicest spot in a forest which, at its best, is a poor
+thing compared with the immemorial growth of an old English
+wood. Here there are no such oaks and beeches as our Hampshire
+forest can show—no such lovely mystical glades—no such
+richness of undergrowth. Everything seems of yesterday, save
+here and there a tree that looks as if he had seen something of
+bygone generations, and here and there a wreck of an ancient
+oak, proudly labelled ‘The Great Pharamond,’ or ‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Le Chêne de
+Henri IV.</i>,’ with a placard hung round his poor old neck to say
+that he is not to be damaged ‘on pain of amend.’ Such Pharamonds and
+Henris abound in the forest where Rufus was killed,
+and nobody heeds them. The owls build in them, the field-mice
+find shelter in them, the woodpecker taps at them, unscared by
+placards or the threat of an amend.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</span></p>
+
+<p>But in the Fontainebleau woods there are rocky glades which
+English forests cannot boast—wild walks between walls of
+gigantic granite boulders—queer shapes of monsters and animals
+in gray stone, which seem to leap out at one from the
+shadows as one passes; innumerable pine-trees; hills and hollows;
+pathways carpeted with red fir-needles, mosses, ferns,
+and wild-flowers; and a bluer brighter sky than the heaven
+which roofs an English landscape.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t this worlds better than Asnières?’ asked Daphne of
+her companion; ‘and aren’t you ever so grateful to those poor
+girls for catching scarlet-fever?’</p>
+
+<p>Asnières was school and constraint, Fontainebleau was liberty;
+so if the forest had been a poorer place, Daphne, who
+hated all restraints, would have loved it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor girls!’ sighed Martha Dibb, a stupid, honest-minded
+young person, whose father kept an Italian warehouse in New
+Oxford street, and whose mother had been seized with the aspiration
+to have her daughters finished at Continental schools;
+whereby one Miss Dibb was being half-starved upon sausage
+and cabbage at Hanover, while the other grew fat upon <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">croûte
+au pot</i> and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bouilli</i> in the neighbourhood of Paris, and was supposed
+to be acquiring the true Parisian accent. ‘Poor girls; it
+was very bad for them,’ sighed Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; but it was very good for us,’ answered Daphne
+lightly; ‘and if it was a part of their destiny to have scarlet-fever,
+how very nice of them to have it in the term instead of
+in the holidays, when we shouldn’t have profited by it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And how lucky that we had that good-natured Miss Toby
+sent with us instead of one of the French governesses.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lucky, indeed!’ cried Daphne, with her bright laugh. ‘That
+good simple Toby, with whom we can do exactly what we like,
+and who is the image of quiet contentment, so long as she has
+even the stupidest novel to read, and some acid-drops to suck.
+I tremble when I think of the amount of acid-drops she must
+consume in the course of a year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why do you give her so many?’ asked the practical Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘They are my peace-offerings when I have been especially
+troublesome,’ said Daphne, with the air of a sinner who glories
+in her troublesomeness. ‘Poor dear old Toby! if I were to give
+her a block of sweetstuff as tall as King Cheops’s pyramid, it
+wouldn’t atone for the life I lead her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope she won’t get into trouble with Madame for letting
+us run wild like this,’ suggested Miss Dibb doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>‘How should Madame know anything about it? And do you
+think she would care a straw if she did?’ retorted Daphne. ‘She
+will get paid exactly the same for us whether we are roaming at
+large in this lovely old forest, or grinding at grammar, and
+analysis, and Racine, and Lafontaine in the stuffy school-room at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</span>
+Asnières, where the train goes shrieking over the bridge every
+half-hour carrying happy people to Paris and gaiety, and
+theatres and operas, and all the good things of this life. What
+does Madame Tolmache care, so long as we are out of mischief?
+And I don’t see how we can get into any mischief here, unless
+that lovely green lizard we saw darting up the gray rock just now
+should turn into an adder and sting us to death.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If Miss Toby hadn’t a headache we couldn’t have come out
+without her,’ said Martha musingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘May Toby and her headache flourish! If she had been well
+enough to come with us we should have been crawling along the
+dusty white road at the edge of the forest, and should never
+have got here. Toby has corns. And now I am going to sketch,’
+said Daphne in an authoritative tone. ‘You can do your crochet:
+for I really suppose now that to you and a certain class of intellects
+there is a kind of pleasure to be derived from poking an
+ivory hook into a loop of berlin wool and pulling it out again.
+But please sit so that I can’t see your work, Dibb dear. The
+very look of that fluffy wool on this hot day almost suffocates
+me.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne produced her drawing-block and opened her colour-box,
+and settled herself in a half-recumbent position on the
+great granite slab, and surveyed the wide landscape below her
+with that gaze of calm patronage which the amateur artist bestows
+on grand, illimitable, untranslatable Nature. She looked
+across the vast valley, with its silver streak of river and its distant
+spires, its ever varying lights and shadows—a scene which
+Turner would have contemplated with awe and a sense of comparative
+impotence; but which ignorance, as personified by
+Daphne, surveyed complacently, wondering where she should
+begin.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it will make a pretty picture,’ she said, ‘if I can
+succeed with it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why don’t you do a tree, or a cottage, or something, as the
+drawing-master said we ought to do—just one simple little thing
+that one could draw correctly?’ asked Martha, who was provokingly
+well furnished with the aggravating quality of commonsense.</p>
+
+<p>‘Drawing-masters are such grovellers,’ said Daphne, dashing
+in a faint outline with her facile pencil. ‘I would rather go on
+making splendid failures all my life than creep along the dull
+path of mediocre merit by the lines and rules of a drawing-master.
+I have no doubt this is going to be a splendid failure,
+and I shall do a devil’s dance upon it presently, as Müller used
+in the woods near Bristol, when he couldn’t please himself. But
+it amuses one for the moment,’ concluded Daphne, with whom
+life was all in the present, and self the centre of the universe.</p>
+
+<p>She splashed away at her sky with her biggest brush, sweeping<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</span>
+across from left to right with a wash of cobalt, and then
+began to edge off the colour into ragged little clouds as the
+despised drawing-master had taught her. There was not a cloud
+in the hot blue sky this midsummer afternoon, and Daphne’s
+treatment was purely conventional.</p>
+
+<p>And now she began her landscape, and tried with multitudinous
+dabs of gray, and green, and blue, Indian red, and Italian
+pink, ochre, and umber, and lake, and sienna, to imitate the
+glory of a fertile valley basking in the sun.</p>
+
+<p>The colours were beginning to get into confusion. The foreground
+and the distance were all on one plane, and Daphne was
+on the point of flinging her block on the red sandy ground, and
+indulging in the luxury of a demon-dance upon her unsuccessful
+effort, when a voice behind her murmured quietly: ‘Give your
+background a wash of light gray, and fetch up your middle-distance
+with a little body colour.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks awfully,’ replied Daphne without looking round,
+and without the faintest indication of surprise. Painters in the
+forest were almost as common as gadflies. They seemed indigenous
+to the soil. ‘Shall I make my pine-trunks umber or
+Venetian red?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Neither,’ answered the unseen adviser. ‘Those tall pine-stems
+are madder-brown, except where the shadows tint them
+with purple.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are exceedingly kind,’ said Daphne, stifling a yawn,
+‘but I don’t think I’ll go on with it. I am so obviously in a
+mess; I suppose nobody but a Turner ought to attempt such a
+valley as that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps not. Linnell or Vicat Cole might be able to give
+a faint idea of it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Linnell!’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I thought he painted nothing
+but wheat-fields, and that his only idea of Nature was a blaze of
+yellow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you seen many of his pictures?’</p>
+
+<p>‘One. I was taken to the Academy last year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Were you very pleased with what you saw?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Delighted—with the gowns and bonnets. It was a Saturday
+afternoon in the height of the season, and I plead guilty to seeing
+very little of the pictures. There were always people in the
+way, and the people were ever so much more interesting than
+the paintings.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What picture can compare with a well-made gown or the
+latest invention in bonnets?’ exclaimed the unknown with good-humoured
+irony.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne hacked the spoiled sheet off her block with a dainty
+little penknife, and looked at the daub longingly, wishing that
+the stranger would depart and leave her free to execute a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pas
+seul</i> upon her abortive effort. But the stranger seemed to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</span>
+no idea of departure. He had evidently settled himself behind
+her, on a camp-stool, or a rock, or some kind of seat; and he
+meant to stay.</p>
+
+<p>She had not yet seen his face. She liked his voice, which
+was of the baritone order, full, and round, and grave, and his
+intonation was that of a man who had lived in what the world
+calls Society. It might not be the best possible intonation—since
+orators and great preachers and successful actors have
+another style—but it was the tone approved by the best people,
+and the only tone that Daphne liked.</p>
+
+<p>‘A drawing-master, no doubt,’ she thought, ‘whose manners
+have been formed in decent society.’</p>
+
+<p>She wiped her brushes and shut her colour-box, with languid
+deliberation, not yet feeling curious enough to turn and inspect
+the stranger, although Martha Dibb was staring at him open-mouthed,
+as still as a stone, and the image of astonishment.
+Daphne augured from that gaping mouth of Martha’s that the
+unknown must be somewhat eccentric in appearance or attire,
+and began to feel faintly inquisitive.</p>
+
+<p>She rose from her recumbent attitude on the rock, drew herself
+as straight as an arrow, shook out her indigo-coloured serge
+petticoat, from beneath whose hem flashed a pair of scarlet stockings
+and neat buckled shoes, shook loose her mane of golden-bright
+hair, and looked deliberately round at Nature generally—the
+woods, the rocks, the brigand’s cave yonder, and the stalls
+where toys and trifles in carved wood were set out to tempt the
+tourist—and finally at the stranger. He lounged at his ease on
+a neighbouring rock, looking up at her with a provokingly self-assured
+expression. Her supposition had been correct, she told
+herself. He evidently belonged to the artistic classes—a drawing-master,
+or a third-rate water-colour painter—a man whose little
+bits of landscape or foreign architecture would be hung near the
+floor, and priced at a few guineas in the official list. He was a
+Bohemian to the tips of his nails. He wore an old velveteen
+coat—Daphne was not experienced enough to know that it had
+been cut by a genius among tailors—a shabby felt hat lay on the
+grass beside him; every one of his garments had seen good service,
+even to the boots, whose neat shape indicated a refinement
+that struggled against adverse circumstances. He was young,
+tall, and slim, with long slender fingers, and hands that looked
+artistic without looking effeminate. He had dark brown hair cut
+close to a well-shaped head, a dark brown moustache shading a
+sensitive and somewhat melancholy mouth. His complexion
+was pale, inclining to sallowness, his nose well formed, his forehead
+broad and low. His eyes were of so peculiar a colour that
+Daphne was at first sorely perplexed as to whether they were
+brown or blue, and finally came to the conclusion that they were
+neither colour, but a variable greenish-gray. But whatever their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</span>
+hue she was fain to admit to herself that the eyes were handsome
+eyes—far too good for the man’s position. Something of their
+beauty was doubtless owing to the thick dark lashes, the strongly
+marked brows. Just now the eyes, after a brief upward glance
+at Daphne, who fairly merited a longer regard, were fixed
+dreamily on the soft dreamlike landscape—the sun-steeped valley,
+the purple distance. It was a day for languorous dreaming;
+a day in which the world-worn soul might slip off the fetters of
+reality and roam at large in shadowland.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dibb,’ said Daphne, ever so slightly piqued at the unknown’s
+absent air, ‘don’t you think we ought to be going home? Poor
+dear Miss Toby will be anxious.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not before six o’clock,’ replied the matter-of-fact Martha.
+‘You told her with your own lips that she wasn’t to expect us
+before six. And what was the good of our carrying that heavy
+basket if we are not to eat our dinner here?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have brought your dinner!’ exclaimed the stranger,
+suddenly waking from his dream. ‘How very delightful! Let
+us improvise a picnic.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The poor thing is hungry,’ thought Daphne, rather disappointed
+at what she considered a low trait in his character.</p>
+
+<p>Martha, with her face addressed to Daphne, began to distort
+her countenance in the most frightful manner, mutely protesting
+against the impropriety of sharing their meal with an unknown
+wanderer. Daphne, who was as mischievous as Robin Goodfellow,
+and doated on everything that was wrong, laughed these
+dumb appeals to scorn.</p>
+
+<p>‘The poor thing shall be fed,’ she said to herself. ‘Perhaps he
+has hardly a penny in his pockets. It will be a pleasure to give
+him a good meal and send him on his way rejoicing. I shall
+feel as meritorious as the Good Samaritan.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is this the basket?’ asked the painter, pouncing upon the
+beehive receptacle which Martha had been hugging for the last
+five minutes. ‘Do let me be useful. I have a genius for picnics.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I never heard of such impertinence!’ ejaculated Miss Dibb
+inwardly; and then she began to wonder whether the valuable
+watch and chain which her father had given her on her last
+birthday were safe in such company, or whether her earrings
+might not be suddenly wrenched out of her ears.</p>
+
+<p>And there was that reckless Daphne, who had not the faintest
+notion of propriety, entering into the thing eagerly as a capital
+joke, and making herself as much at home with the nameless
+intruder as if she had known him all her life.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dibb had been Daphne’s devoted slave for the last two
+years, had admired her and believed in her, and fetched and
+carried for her, and had been landed in all manner of scrapes
+and difficulties by her without a murmur; but she had never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</span>
+been so near revolt as at this moment, when her deep-rooted,
+thoroughly British sense of propriety was outraged as it had
+never in all Daphne’s escapades been outraged before. A strange
+man, fairly well-mannered it is true, but shabbily clad, was to be
+allowed to hob and nob in a place of public resort with two of
+Madame Tolmache’s young ladies.</p>
+
+<p>Martha looked despairingly round, as if to see that help was
+nigh. They were not alone in the forest. This hill side at the
+top of the rocky walk was a favourite resort. There were stalls
+for toys and stalls for refreshments close at hand. There were
+half-a-dozen groups of idle people enjoying themselves under the
+tall pines and in the shadow of the big blue-gray rocks. The
+mother of one estimable family had taken off her boots, and was
+lying at full length, with her stockings exposed to the libertine
+gaze of passers-by. Some were eating, some were sleeping.
+Children with cropped heads, short petticoats, and a great deal
+of stocking, were flying gaudy-coloured air-balls, and screaming
+at each other as only French children can scream. There was
+not the stillness of a dense primeval wood, the awful solitude of
+the Great Dismal Swamp. The place was rather like a bit of
+Greenwich Park or Hampstead Heath on a comparatively quiet
+afternoon in the middle of the week.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dibb took heart of grace, and decided that her watch
+and earrings were safe. It was only her character that was
+likely to suffer. Daphne was dancing about among the rocks
+all this time, spreading a damask napkin on a smooth slab of
+granite, and making the most of the dinner. Her red stockings
+flashed to and fro like fireflies. She had a scarlet ribbon round
+her neck, and the dark serge gown was laced up the back with a
+scarlet cord, and, with her feathery hair flying loose and glittering
+in the sun, she was as bright a figure as ever lit up the foreground
+of a forest scene.</p>
+
+<p>The unknown forgot to be useful, and sat on his granite
+bench lazily contemplating her as she completed her preparations.</p>
+
+<p>‘What an idle person you are!’ she exclaimed, looking up
+from her task. ‘Tumbler!’</p>
+
+<p>He explored the basket and produced the required article.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks. Corkscrew! Don’t run away with the idea that
+you are going to have wine. The corkscrew is for our lemonade.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You needn’t put such a selfish emphasis on the possessive
+pronoun,’ said the stranger. ‘I mean to have some of that
+lemonade.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne surveyed the banquet critically, with her head on
+one side. It was not a stupendous meal for two hungry school-girls
+and an unknown pedestrian, whom Daphne supposed to
+have been on short commons for the last week or two. There
+was half a roasted fowl—a fowl who in his zenith had no claim<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</span>
+to be considered a fine specimen, and who seemed to have fallen
+upon evil days before he was sacrificed, so gaunt was his leg, so
+shrunken his wing, so withered his breast; there were some
+thin slices of carmine ham, with a bread-crumby edge instead of
+fat. Of one thing there was abundance, and that was the staff
+of life. Two long brown loaves—the genuine <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pain de ménage</i>—suggested
+a homely kind of plenty. For dessert there was a
+basket of wood-strawberries, a thin slab of Gruyère, and some
+small specimens of high-art confectionery, more attractive to
+the eye than the palate.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Dibb dear, grace, if you please,’ commanded Daphne,
+with a mischievous side-glance at the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>That French grace of poor Martha’s was a performance
+which always delighted Daphne, and she wanted the wayfarer
+to enjoy himself. The ‘ongs’ and ‘dongs’ were worth hearing.
+Gravely the submissive Martha complied, and with solemn
+countenance asked a blessing on the meal.</p>
+
+<p>‘You can have all the fowl,’ said Daphne to her guest;
+‘Martha and I like bread and cheese ever so much better.’</p>
+
+<p>She tore one of the big brown loaves in two, tossed one half
+to Martha, and broke a great knob off the other for her own
+eating, attacking it ravenously with her strong white teeth.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are more than good,’ replied the stranger with his
+pleasantly listless air, as if there were nothing in life worth being
+energetic about; ‘you are actually self-sacrificing. But, to tell
+you the honest truth, I have not the slightest appetite. I had
+my second breakfast at one o’clock, and I had much rather carve
+that elderly member of the feathered tribe for you than eat him.
+I wish he were better worthy of your consideration.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at him doubtfully, unconvinced.</p>
+
+<p>‘I know you’re disparaging the bird out of kindness to us,’
+she said; ‘you might just as well eat a good luncheon. Martha
+and I adore bread and cheese.’</p>
+
+<p>She emphasised this assertion with a stealthy frown at poor
+Miss Dibb, who saw her dinner thus coolly confiscated for the
+good of a suspicious-looking interloper.</p>
+
+<p>‘You doat upon Gruyère, don’t you, Martha?’ she demanded.</p>
+
+<p>‘I like it pretty well,’ answered Miss Dibb sulkily; ‘but I
+think the holes are the nicest part.’</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was cutting up the meagre fowl, giving the wing
+and breast to Daphne, the sinewy leg to Martha, who was the
+kind of girl to go through life getting the legs of fowls and the
+back seat in opera-boxes, and the worst partners at afternoon
+dances.</p>
+
+<p>Finding the unknown inflexible, and being herself desperately
+hungry, Daphne ended by taking her share of the poultry, while
+her guest ate a few strawberries and munched a crust of bread,
+lying along the grass all the while, almost at her feet. It was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</span>
+new experience, and the more horrified Martha looked the more
+Daphne enjoyed it.</p>
+
+<p>What was life to her but the present hour, with its radiant
+sun and glad earth flushed with colour, the scent of the pines,
+the hum of the bees, the delight of the butterflies flashing across
+the blue? Utterly innocent in her utter ignorance of evil, she
+saw no snare in such simple joys, she had no premonition of
+danger. Her worst suspicion of the stranger was that he might
+be poor. That was the only social crime whereof she knew.
+And the more convinced she felt of his poverty, the more determined
+she was to be civil to him.</p>
+
+<p>He lay at her feet, on a carpet of fir-needles, looking up at
+her with an admiration almost as purely artistic as that which
+he had felt an hour ago for a green and purple lizard which he
+had caught asleep on one of the rocks, and which had darted up
+a sheer wall of granite, swift as a sun-ray, at the light touch of
+his finger-tip. With a love of the beautiful almost as abstract
+as that which he had felt for the graceful curves and rainbow
+tints of the lizard, he lay and basked in the light of this school-girl’s
+violet eyes, and watched the play of sunbeam and shadow
+on her golden hair. To him, too, the present hour was all in all—an
+hour of sunlight and perfume and balmiest atmosphere, an
+hour’s sweet idleness, empty of thought and care.</p>
+
+<p>The face he looked at was not one of those perfect faces which
+would bear to be transfixed in marble. It was a countenance
+whose chief beauty lay in colour and expression—a face full of
+variety; now whimsically gay, now pouting, now pert; anon
+suddenly pensive. Infinitely bewitching in some phases, it was
+infinitely provoking in others; but, under all conditions, it was a
+face full of interest.</p>
+
+<p>The complexion was brilliant, the true English red and
+white; no ivory-pale beauty this, with the sickly tints of Gibson’s
+painted Venus, but the creamy fairness and the vivid rose
+of health, and youth, and happiness. The eyes were of darkest
+gray, that deep violet which, under thick dark lashes, looks
+black as night. The nose was short and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">retroussé</i>, nothing to
+boast of in noses; the mouth was a trifle wide, but the lips were
+of loveliest form and richest carmine, the teeth flashing beneath
+them absolutely perfect. Above those violet eyes arched strongly-marked
+brows of darkest brown, contrasting curiously with the
+thick fringe of golden hair. Altogether the face was more
+original in its beauty than any which the stronger had looked
+upon for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you any sketches to show us?’ asked Daphne when
+she had finished her dinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I have not been sketching this morning; and if I had
+done anything I doubt if it would have been worth looking at.
+You must not suppose that I am a grand artist. But if you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</span>
+don’t mind lending me your block and your colour-box for half
+an hour I should like to make a little sketch now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Cool,’ thought Daphne. ‘But calm impudence is this gentleman’s
+leading characteristic.’</p>
+
+<p>She handed him block and box with an amused smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you going to paint the valley?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I leave that for a new Turner. I am only going to
+try my hand at a rock with a young lady sitting on it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure Martha won’t mind being painted,’ replied Daphne,
+with a mischievous glance at Miss Dibb, who was sitting bolt
+upright on her particular block of granite, the image of stiffness
+and dumb disapproval. She was a thick-set girl with sandy
+hair and freckles, not bad-looking after her homely fashion, but
+utterly wanting in grace.</p>
+
+<p>‘I couldn’t think of taking such a liberty with Miss Martha,’
+returned the stranger; ‘the freemasonry of art puts me at my
+ease with you. Would you mind sitting quiet for half an hour
+or so? That semi-recumbent position will do beautifully.’</p>
+
+<p>He sketched in rock and figure as he spoke, with a free facile
+touch that showed a practised hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure you can paint beautifully,’ said Daphne, watching
+his pencil as he sat a little way off, glancing up at her every now
+and then.</p>
+
+<p>‘Wait till you see how I shall interpret your lilies and roses.
+I ought to be as good a colourist as Rubens or John Phillip to
+do you justice.’</p>
+
+<p>She had fallen into a reposeful attitude after finishing her
+meal, her arms folded on the rock, her head resting on the folded
+arms, her eyes gazing sleepily at the sunlit valley in front of her,
+one little foot pendent from the edge of the greenish gray stone,
+the other tucked under her dark blue skirt, a mass of yellow
+tresses falling over one dark blue shoulder, and a scarlet ribbon
+fluttering on the other.</p>
+
+<p>Martha Dibb looked more and more horrified. Could there
+be a lower deep than this? To sit for one’s portrait to an unknown
+artist in a shabby coat. The man was unquestionably a
+vagabond, although he did not make havoc of his aspirates like
+poor dear papa; and Daphne was bringing disgrace on Madame
+Tolmache’s whole establishment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Suppose I should meet him in Regent Street one day after
+I leave school, and he were to speak to me, what would mamma
+and Jane say?’ thought Miss Dibb.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND THIS WAS GLADLY IN THE EVENTIDE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Daphne</span> was as still as a statue, her vanity gratified by
+this homage to her charms. There had been nobody to admire
+her at Asnières but the old music-master, into whose hat she had
+sometimes put a little bouquet from the trim suburban garden,
+or a spray of acacia from the grove that screened the maiden
+meditations of Madame Tolmache’s pupils from the vulgar gaze
+of the outside world. She retained her recumbent attitude
+patiently for nearly an hour, half asleep in the balmy afternoon
+atmosphere, while the outraged Martha sat on her rock apart,
+digging her everlasting crochet-hook into the fluffy mass of
+wool, and saying never a word.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was nearly as silent as Martha. He was working
+industriously at his sketch, and smoking his cigar as he
+worked, having first ascertained that the ladies were tolerant
+of the weed. He painted in a large dashing style that got over
+the ground very quickly, and made a good effect. He had
+nearly finished his sketch of the figure on the rock—the indigo
+gown, scarlet ribbon, bright hair, and dark luminous eyes, when
+Daphne jumped up suddenly, and vowed that her every limb
+was an agony to her.</p>
+
+<p>‘I couldn’t endure it an instant longer!’ she exclaimed.
+‘I hope you’ve finished.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not quite; but you may change your attitude as much as
+you like if you’ll only keep your head the same way. I am
+working at the face now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What are you going to do with the picture when it’s finished?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Keep it till my dying day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you would perhaps give it—I mean sell it—to
+me. I could not afford a large price, for my people are very
+poor, but——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your looking-glass will show you a better portrait than this
+poor sketch of mine. And, in after years, even this libellous
+daub will serve to remind me of a happy hour in my life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad you have enjoyed yourself,’ said Daphne; ‘but I
+really wish you had eaten that fowl. Have you far to go home
+to dinner?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only to Fontainebleau.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are living there?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am staying there. I may strike my tent and be across
+the Jura to-morrow night. I never live anywhere.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But haven’t you a home and people?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have a kind of home, but no people.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor fellow!’ murmured Daphne, with exquisite compassion.
+‘Are you an orphan?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; my father died nine years ago, my mother last year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How awfully sad! No brothers or sisters?’</p>
+
+<p>‘None. I am a crystallisation, the last of a vanishing race.
+And now I have done as much as I dare to your portrait. Any
+attempt at finish would result in failure. I am writing the
+place and the date in the corner of my sketch. May I write
+your name?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My name!’ exclaimed Daphne, her eyes sparkling with
+mischief, her cheeks curving into dimples.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; your name. You have a name, I suppose: unless
+you are the nameless spirit of sunlit woodlands, masquerading
+in a blue gown?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My name—is—Poppæa,’ faltered Daphne, whose latest chapter
+of Roman history had been the story of Nero and his various
+crimes, toned down and expurgated to suit young ladies’ schools.</p>
+
+<p>Poppæa Sabina, thus chastely handled, had appeared nothing
+worse than a dressy lady of extravagant tastes, who took elaborate
+care of her complexion, and had a fancy for shoeing her
+mules with gold.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you say Poppet?’ inquired the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; Poppæa. You must have heard the name before, I
+should think. It is a Roman name. My father is a great
+classical scholar, and he chose it for me. And pray what is
+your name?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>The stranger pronounced the word without moving a muscle
+of his face, still intent upon his sketch; for it is vain for a man
+to say he has finished a thing of that kind; so long as his brushes
+are within reach, he will be putting in new touches. There was
+not a twinkle in those dubious eyes of his—not an upward move
+of those mobile lips. He was as grave as a judge.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t believe it!’ cried Daphne, bouncing up from her rock.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t believe what?’</p>
+
+<p>‘That your name is Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why not? Have I not as good a right to bear a Roman
+name as you have? Suppose I had a classical father as well as
+you. Why not?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is too absurd.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Many things are absurd which yet are absolutely true.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you are really called Nero?’</p>
+
+<p>‘As really as you are called Poppæa.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is so dreadfully like a dog’s name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a dog’s name. But you may call your dog Bill, or Joe,
+or Paul, or Peter. I don’t think that makes any difference. I
+would sooner have some dogs for my namesakes than some men.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dibb, dear,’ said Daphne, turning sharply upon the victim of
+her folly, the long-suffering, patient Martha. ‘What’s the time?’</p>
+
+<p>She had a watch of her own, a neat little gold hunter; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</span>
+it was rarely in going order for two consecutive days, and she
+was generally dependent on the methodical Dibb for all information
+as to the flight of time.</p>
+
+<p>‘A quarter to five.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then we must be going home instantly. How could you let
+me stay so long, you foolish girl? I am sure it must be more
+than an hour’s walk to the town, and we promised poor dear
+Toby to be home by six.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It isn’t my fault,’ remarked Miss Dibb; ‘I should have been
+glad to go ever so long ago, if you had thought fit.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hurry up, then, Dibb dear. Put away your crochet. Have
+you quite done with my block?’ to the unknown. ‘Thank you
+muchly. And now my box? Those go into the basket. Thanks,
+awfully,’ as he helped her to pack the tumblers, corkscrew, plates,
+and knives, which had served for their primitive repast. ‘And
+now we will wish you good-day—Mr.—Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>‘On no account. I am going to carry that basket back to
+Fontainebleau for you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘All along that dusty high road. We couldn’t think of such
+a thing; could we, Martha?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know that my opinion is of much account,’ said
+Martha stiffly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t, you dear creature!’ cried Daphne, darting at her, and
+hugging her affectionately. ‘Don’t try to be ill-tempered, for
+you can’t do it. The thing is an ignominious failure. You were
+created to be good-natured, and nice, and devoted—especially
+to me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You know how fond I am of you,’ murmured Martha reproachfully;
+‘and you take a mean advantage of me when you
+go on so.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How am I going on? Is it very dreadful to let a gentleman
+carry a heavy basket for me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A gentleman!’ muttered Martha, with a supercilious glance
+at the stranger’s well-worn velveteen.</p>
+
+<p>He was standing a little way off, out of hearing, taking a last
+long look at the valley.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; and every inch a gentleman, though his coat is shabby,
+and though he may be as poor as Job, and though he makes
+game of me!’ protested Daphne with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have your own way,’ replied Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘I generally do,’ answered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>And so they went slowly winding downhill in the westering
+sunshine, all among the gray rocks on which the purple shadows
+were deepening, the warm umber lights glowing, while the rosy
+evening light came creeping up in the distant west, and the voice
+of an occasional bird, so rare in this Gallic wood, took a vesper
+sound in the summer stillness.</p>
+
+<p>The holiday makers had all gone home. The French matron<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</span>
+who had taken her rest so luxuriously, surrounded by her olivebranches,
+had put on her boots and departed. The women who
+sold cakes and fruit, and wooden paper-knives, had packed up
+their wares and gone away. All was silence and loneliness; and
+for a little while Daphne and her companions wandered on in
+quiet enjoyment of the scene and the atmosphere, treading the
+mossy, sandy path that wound in and out among the big rocks,
+sometimes nearly losing themselves, and anon following the blue
+arrow points which a careful hand had painted on the rocks to
+show them which way they should go.</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne was not given to silence. She found something
+to talk about before they had gone very far.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have travelled immensely, I suppose?’ she said to the
+stranger.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know exactly what significance you attach to the
+word. Young ladies use such large words nowadays for such
+very small things. From a scientific explorer’s point of view, my
+wanderings have been very limited, but I daresay one of Cook’s
+tourists would consider me a respectable traveller. I have never
+seen the buried cities of Central America, nor surveyed the world
+from the top of Mount Everest, nor even climbed the Caucasus,
+nor wandered by stormy Hydaspes: but I have done Egypt, and
+Algeria, and Greece, and all that is tolerably worth seeing in
+Southern Europe, and have tried my hand, or rather my legs, at
+Alpine climbing, and have come to the conclusion that, although
+Nature is mountainous, life is everywhere more or less flat, stale,
+and unprofitable.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure I shouldn’t feel that if I were free to roam the
+world, and could paint as sweetly as you do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I had a sweet subject, remember.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t,’ cried Daphne; ‘I rather like you when you
+are rude, but if you flatter I shall hate you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I’ll be rude. To win your liking I would be more
+uncivil than Petruchio.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Katharine was a fool!’ exclaimed Daphne, skipping up the
+craggy side of one of the biggest rocks. ‘I have always despised
+her. To begin so well, and end so tamely.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you don’t take care you’ll end by slipping off that rock,
+and spraining an ankle or two,’ said Nero warningly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not I,’ answered Daphne confidently; ‘you don’t know
+how used I am to climbing. Oh, look at that too delicious
+lizard!’</p>
+
+<p>She was on her knees admiring the emerald-hued changeful
+creature. She touched it only with her breath, and it flashed
+away from her and vanished in some crevice of the rock.</p>
+
+<p>‘Silly thing, did it think I wanted to hurt it, when I was only
+worshipping its beauty?’ she cried.</p>
+
+<p>Then she rose suddenly, and stood on the rock, a slim girlish<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</span>
+figure, with flattering drapery, poised as lightly as Mercury,
+gazing round her, admiring the tall slim stems of the beeches
+growing in groups like clustered columns, the long vista of rocks,
+the dark wall of fir-trees, mounting up and up to the edge of a
+saffron-tinted sky—for these loiterers had lost count of time since
+steady-going Martha looked at her reliable watch, and the last of
+the finches had sung his lullaby to his wife and family, and the
+golden ship called Sol had gone down to Night’s dark sea.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come down, you absurd creature!’ exclaimed Nero, with a
+peremptory voice, winding one arm about the light figure, and
+lifting the girl off the rock as easily as if she had been a feather-weight.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very horrid!’ protested Daphne indignantly. ‘You
+are ever so much ruder than Petruchio. Why shouldn’t I stand
+on that rock? I was only admiring the landscape!’</p>
+
+<p>‘No doubt, and two minutes hence you would be calling upon
+us to admire a fine example of a sprained ankle.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure if your namesake was ever as unkind to my namesake,
+it’s no wonder she died young,’ said Daphne, pouting.</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe he was occasionally a little rough upon her,’ answered
+the artist with his imperturbable air. ‘But of course
+you have read your Tacitus and your Suetonius in the original.
+Young ladies know everything nowadays.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The Roman history we read is by a clergyman, written expressly
+for ladies’ schools,’ said Miss Dibb demurely.</p>
+
+<p>‘How intensely graphic and interesting that chronicle must
+be!’ retorted the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>They had come to the end of the winding path among the
+rocks by this time, and were in a long, straight road, cut through
+the heart of the forest, between tall trees that seemed to have
+outgrown their strength—weedy-looking trees, planted too
+thickly, and only able to push their feeble growth up towards
+the sun, with no room for spreading boughs or interlacing roots.
+The evening light was growing grave and gray. Bats were
+skimming across the path, uncomfortably near Daphne’s flowing
+hair. Miss Dibb began to grumble.</p>
+
+<p>‘How dreadfully we have loitered!’ she cried, looking at her
+watch. ‘It is nearly eight, and we have so far to go. What
+will Miss Toby say?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, she will moan a little, no doubt,’ answered Daphne
+lightly, ‘and will tell us that her heart has been in her mouth for
+the last hour, which need not distress us much, as we know it’s a
+physical impossibility; and that anyone might knock her down
+with a feather—another obvious impossibility, seeing that poor
+Toby weighs eleven stone—and then I shall kiss her and make
+much of her, and give her the packet of nougat I mean to buy
+on the way home, and all will be sunshine. She takes a sticky
+delight in nougat And now please talk and amuse us,’ said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</span>
+Daphne, turning to the artist with an authoritative air. ‘Tell
+us about some of your travels, or tell us where you live when
+you’re at home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I’d rather talk of my travels. I’ve just come from
+Italy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Where you have been painting prodigiously, of course. It
+is a land of pictures, is it not?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; but Nature’s pictures are even better than the treasures
+of art.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If ever I should marry,’ said Daphne with a dreamy look, as
+if she were contemplating an event far off in the dimness of
+twenty years hence, ‘I should insist upon my husband taking
+me to Italy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to afford the expense,’ suggested
+the practical Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I wouldn’t marry him,’ Daphne retorted decisively.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t that rather a mercenary notion?’ asked the gentleman
+with the basket.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not at all. Do you suppose I should marry just for the
+sake of having a husband? If ever I do marry—which I think
+is more than doubtful—it will be, first and foremost, in order
+that I may do everything I wish to do, and have everything I
+want to have. Is there anything singular in that?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I suppose it is a young beauty’s innate idea of marriage.
+She sees herself in a glass, and recognises perfection, and
+knows her own value.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you married?’ asked Daphne abruptly, eager to change
+the conversation when the stranger became complimentary.</p>
+
+<p>‘No.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Engaged?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What is she like?’ inquired Daphne eagerly. ‘Please tell
+us about her. It will be ever so much more interesting than
+Italy; for, after all, when one hasn’t seen a country description
+goes for so little. What is she like?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I could best answer that question in one word if I were to
+say she is perfection.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You called me perfection just now,’said Daphne pettishly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I was talking of your face. She is perfection in all things.
+Perfectly pure, and true, and good, and noble. She is handsome,
+highly accomplished, rich.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And yet you go wandering about the world in that coat,’
+exclaimed Daphne, too impulsive to be polite.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is shabby, is it not? But if you knew how comfortable
+it is you wouldn’t wonder that I have an affection for it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go on about the young lady, please. Have you been long
+engaged to her?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ever since I can remember, in my heart of hearts: she was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</span>
+my bright particular star when I was a boy at school: she was
+my sole incentive to work, or decent behaviour, when I was at
+the University. And now I am not going to say any more about
+her. I think I have told you enough to gratify any reasonable
+curiosity. Ask me conundrums, young ladies, if you please, or
+do something to amuse me. Remember, I am carrying the
+basket, and a man is something more than a beast of burden.
+My mind requires relaxation.’</p>
+
+<p>Martha Dibb grinned all over broad frank face. Riddles
+were her delight. She had little manuscript books filled with
+them in her scrawly, pointed writing. She began at once, like a
+musical-box that has been wound up, and did not leave off asking
+conundrums till they were half-way down the long street leading
+to the palace, near which Miss Toby and her pupils had their
+lodging.</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne had no intention that the stranger should learn
+exactly where she lived. Reckless as she was, mirthful and
+mischievous as Puck or Robin Goodfellow, she had still a dim
+idea that her conduct was not exactly correct, or would not be
+correct in England. On the Continent, of course, there must be
+a certain license. English travellers dined at public tables, and
+gamed in public rooms—were altogether more sociable and open
+to approach than on their native soil. It was only a chosen few—the
+peculiarly gifted in stiffness—who retained their glacial
+crust through every change of scene and climate, and who would
+perish rather than cross the street ungloved, or discourse
+familiarly with an unaccredited stranger. But, even with due
+allowance for Continental laxity, Daphne felt that she had gone
+a little too far. So she pulled up suddenly at the corner of a
+side street, and demanded her basket.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does that mean?’ asked the painter, with a look of
+lazy surprise.</p>
+
+<p>‘Only that this is our way home, and that we won’t trouble
+you to carry the basket any further, thanks intensely.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I am going to carry it to your door.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s awfully good of you to propose it, but our governess
+would be angry with us for imposing on the kindness of a
+stranger, and I am afraid we should get into trouble.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I haven’t a word to say,’ answered the painter, smiling
+at her blushing eloquent face. Verily a speaking face—beautiful
+just as a sunlit meadow is beautiful, because of the lights and
+shadows that flit and play perpetually across it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you live in this street?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; our house is in the second turning to the right, seven
+doors from the corner,’ said Daphne, who had obtained possession
+of the basket. ‘Good-bye.’</p>
+
+<p>She ran off with light swift foot, followed lumpishly and
+breathlessly by the scandalised Martha.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, how could you tell him such an outrageous story?’
+she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think I was going to tell him the truth?’ asked
+Daphne, still fluttering on, light as a lapwing. ‘We should have
+had him calling on Miss Toby to-morrow morning to ask if we
+were fatigued by our walk, or perhaps singing the serenade from
+Don Giovanni under our windows to-night. Now, Martha
+dearest, don’t say one word; I know I have behaved shamefully,
+but it has been awful fun, hasn’t it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure I felt ready to sink through the ground all the
+time,’ panted Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘Darling, the ground and you are both too solid for there to
+be any fear of that.’</p>
+
+<p>They had turned a corner by this time, and doubling and
+winding, always at a run, they came very speedily to the quiet
+spot near the palace, where their governess had lodged them in a
+low blind-looking white house, with only one window that commanded
+a view of the street.</p>
+
+<p>They had been so fleet of foot, and had so doubled on the unknown,
+that, from this upper window, they had presently the
+satisfaction of seeing him come sauntering along the empty
+street, careless, indifferent, with dreamy eyes looking forward
+into vacancy, a man without a care.</p>
+
+<p>‘He doesn’t look as if he minded our having given him the
+slip one little bit,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should he?’ asked the matter-of-fact Martha. ‘I
+daresay he was tired of carrying the basket.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go your ways,’ said Daphne with a faint sigh, waving her
+hand at the vanishing figure. ‘Go your ways over mountain
+and sea, through wood and valley. This world is a big place, and
+it isn’t likely you and I will ever meet again.’ Then, turning
+to her companion with a sudden change of manner, she exclaimed:
+‘Martha, I believe we have both made a monstrous
+mistake.’</p>
+
+<p>‘As how?’ asked Miss Dibb stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>‘In taking him for a poor artist.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He looks like one.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not he. There is nothing about him but his coat that looks
+poor, and he wears that as if it were purple and ermine. Did
+you notice his eye when he ordered us to change the conversation,
+an eye accustomed to look at inferiors? And there is a
+careless pride in his manner, like a man who believes that the
+world was made on purpose for him, yet doesn’t want to make
+any fuss about it. Then he is engaged to a rich lady, and he has
+been at a university. No, Martha, I am sure he is no wandering
+artist living on his pencil.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then he must think all the worse of us,’ said Martha,
+solemnly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘What does it matter?’ asked Daphne, with a careless shrug.
+‘We have seen the last of each other.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We can never be sure of that. One might meet him at a
+party.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think you will,’ said Daphne, faintly supercilious,
+‘and the chances are ever so many to one against even my
+meeting him anywhere.’</p>
+
+<p>Here Miss Toby burst into the room. She had been lying
+down in an adjacent chamber, resting her poor bilious head,
+when the girls came softly in, and had only just heard their
+voices.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, you dreadful girls, what hours of torture you have
+caused me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thought something must have
+happened.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Something did happen,’ said Daphne; whereupon Martha
+thought she was going to confess everything.</p>
+
+<p>‘What?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A lizard.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did it sting you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; it darted away when I looked at it. A lovely glittering
+green thing. I wish I could tame one and wear it for a necklace.
+And I nearly fell off a rock; and I tried hard to paint the
+valley, and made a most dismal failure. But the view from the
+hill is positively delicious, Toby dear, and the rocks are wonderful;
+huge masses of granite tumbled about among the trees anyhow,
+as if Titans had been pelting one another. It’s altogether
+lovely. You must go with us to-morrow, Toby love.’</p>
+
+<p>Miss Toby, diverted from her intention to scold, shook her
+head despondingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like it of all things,’ she sighed. ‘But I am such a
+bad walker, and the heat always affects my head. Besides, I
+think we ought to go over the palace to-morrow. There is so
+much instruction to be derived from a place so full of historical
+associations.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No doubt,’ answered the flippant Daphne, ‘though if you
+were to tell me that it had been built by Julius Cæsar or Alfred
+the Great, I should hardly be wise enough to contradict you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Daphne, after you have been so carefully grounded
+in history,’ remonstrated Miss Toby.</p>
+
+<p>‘I know, dear; but then you see I have never built anything
+on the ground. It’s all very well to dig out foundations, but if
+one never gets any further than that! But we’ll see the palace
+to-morrow, and you shall teach me no end of history while we
+are looking at pictures and things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If my poor head be well enough,’ sighed Miss Toby, and
+then she began to move languidly to and fro, arranging for the
+refreshment of her pupils, who wanted their supper.</p>
+
+<p>When the supper was ready, Daphne could eat nothing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</span>
+although five minutes before she had declared herself ravenous.
+She was too excited to eat. She talked of the forest, the view,
+the heat, the sky, everything except the stranger, and his name
+was trembling on her lips perpetually. Every now and then she
+pulled herself up abruptly in the middle of a sentence, and
+flashed a vivid glance at stolid Martha, her dark gray eyes
+shining like stars, full of mischievous light. She would have
+liked to tell Miss Toby everything, but to do so might be to
+surrender all future liberty. Headache or no headache, the
+honest little governess would never have allowed her pupils to
+wander about alone again, could she have beheld them, in her
+mind’s eye, picnicking with a nameless stranger.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little bit of garden at the back of the low, white
+house, hardly more than a green courtyard, with a square grass
+plot and a few shrubs, into which enclosure the windows all
+looked, save that one peep-hole towards the street. Above the
+white wall that shut in the bit of green rose the foliage of a
+much larger garden—acacias shedding their delicate perfume on
+the cool night, limes just breaking into flower, dark-leaved magnolias,
+tulip-trees, birch and aspen—a lovely variety of verdure.
+And over all this shone the broad disk of a ripening moon, flooding
+the world with light.</p>
+
+<p>When supper was over, Daphne bounded out into the moonlit
+garden, and began to play at battledore and shuttlecock. She
+was all life and fire and movement, and could not have sat still
+for the world.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come,’ she cried to Martha; ‘bring your battledore. A
+match for a franc’s worth of nougat.’</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dibb had settled herself to her everlasting crochet by
+the light of two tall candles. Miss Toby was reading a Tauchnitz
+novel.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m tired to death,’ grumbled Martha. ‘I’m sure we must
+have walked miles upon miles. How can you be so restless?’</p>
+
+<p>‘How can you mope indoors on such an exquisite night?’
+exclaimed Daphne. ‘I feel as if I could send my shuttlecock up
+to the moon. Come out and be beaten! No; you are too wise.
+You know that I should win to-night.’</p>
+
+<p>The little toy of cork and feathers quivered high up in the
+bright air; the slender, swaying figure bent back like a reed as
+the girl looked upward; the fair golden head moved with every
+motion of the battledore as the player bent or rose to anticipate
+the flying cork.</p>
+
+<p>She was glad to be out there alone. She was thinking of the
+unknown all the time. She could not get him out of her mind.
+She had a vague unreasonable idea that he must be near her;
+that he saw her as she played; that he was hiding somewhere in
+the shadow yonder, peeping over the wall; that he was in the
+moon—in the night—everywhere; that it was his breath which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</span>
+flattered those leaves trembling above the wall; that it was his
+footfall which she heard rustling among the shrubs—a stealthy,
+mysterious sound mingling with the plish-plash of the fountain
+in the next garden. She had talked lightly enough a little while
+ago of having seen the last of him: yet now, alone with her
+thoughts in the moonlit garden, it seemed as if this nameless
+stranger were interwoven with the fabric of her life, a part of her
+destiny for evermore.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND VOLATILE, AS AY WAS HIS USAGE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Another</span> brilliant summer day, a cloudless blue sky, a world
+steeped in sunshine. On the broad gravelled space in front of
+the palace-railings the heat and glare would have been too much
+for a salamander, and even Daphne, who belonged to the salamander
+species in so much as she had an infinite capacity for
+enjoying sunshine, blinked a little as she crossed the shelterless
+promenade, under her big tussore parasol, a delightfully cool-looking
+figure, in a plain white muslin gown, and a muslin
+shepherdess hat.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Miss Toby’s chronic headache had been a little worse
+this morning. Heroically had she striven to fulfil her duty,
+albeit to lift her leaden head from the pillow was absolute agony.
+She sat at the breakfast-table, white, ghastly, uncomplaining,
+pouring out coffee, at the very odour of which her bilious soul
+sickened. Vainly did Daphne entreat her to go back to bed, and
+to leave her charges to take care of themselves, as they had done
+yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>‘We won’t go to the forest any more till you are able to go
+with us,’ said Daphne, dimly conscious that her behaviour in that
+woodland region had been open to blame. ‘We can just go
+quietly to the palace, and stroll through the rooms with the few
+tourists who are likely to be there to-day. The Fontainebleau
+season has hardly begun, don’t you know, and we may have
+nobody but the guide, and of course he must be a respectable
+person.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear, I was sent here to take care of you both, and I
+must do my duty,’ answered Miss Toby with a sickly smile.
+‘Yesterday my temples throbbed so that I could hardly move,
+but I am a little better to-day, and I shall put on my bonnet and
+come with you.’</p>
+
+<p>She rose, staggered a few paces towards the adjacent chamber,
+and reeled like a landsman at sea. Then she sank into the
+nearest chair, and breathed a weary sigh.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘It’s no use, Toby darling,’ cried Daphne, bending over her
+with tenderest sympathy. To be tender, sweet, and sympathetic
+in little outward ways, tones of voice, smiles, and looks, was one
+of Daphne’s dangerous gifts. ‘My dearest Toby, why struggle
+against the inevitable?’ she urged. ‘It is simply one of your
+regular bilious attacks. All you have to do is to lie quietly in a
+dark room and sleep it off, just as you have so often done before.
+To-morrow you will be as well as I am.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then why not wait till to-morrow for seeing the palace,’ said
+Miss Toby faintly, ‘and amuse yourselves at home, for once in a
+way? You really ought to study a little, Daphne. Madame
+will be horrified if she finds you have done no work all this
+time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I do work of an evening—sometimes, dearest,’ expostulated
+Daphne; ‘and I’m sure you would not like us to be half
+suffocated all day in this stifling little salon, poring over horrid
+books. We should be having the fever next, and then how
+would you account to Madame for your stewardship?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be irreverent, Daphne,’ said Miss Toby, who thought
+that any use of scriptural phrases out of church was a kind of
+blasphemy. ‘I think you would really be better indoors upon
+such a day as this; but I feel too languid to argue the point.
+What would you like best, Martha?’</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dibb, who employed every odd scrap of spare time in
+the development of her <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">magnum opus</i> in crochet-work, looked
+up with a glance of indifference, and was about to declare her
+willingness to stay indoors for ever, so that the crochet counterpane
+might flourish and wax wide, when a stealthy frown from
+Daphne checked her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne would rather see the palace to-day, I know,’ she
+replied meekly, ‘and I think,’ with a nervous glance at her
+schoolfellow, who was scowling savagely, ‘I think I would rather
+go too.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well,’ sighed Miss Toby, ‘I have made an effort, but I feel
+that I could not endure the glare out of doors. You must go
+alone. Be sure you are both very quiet, if there are tourists
+about. Don’t giggle, or look round at people, or make fun of
+their gowns and bonnets, as you are too fond of doing. It is
+horribly unladylike. And if any stranger should try to get into
+conversation with you—of course only a low-bred person would
+do such a thing—pray remember that your own self-respect
+would counsel you to be dumb.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can you suppose we would speak to anyone?’ exclaimed
+Daphne, as she tripped away to her little bedroom, next door to
+Miss Toby’s. It was the queerest little room, with a narrow,
+white-muslin-curtained bed in a recess, and a marvellous piece
+of furniture which was washstand, chest of drawers, and dressing-table<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</span>
+all in one. A fly-spotted glass, inclining from the wall
+above this <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">multum in parvo</i>, was Daphne’s only mirror.</p>
+
+<p>Here she put on her muslin hat, with a bouquet of blue cornflowers
+perched coquettishly on the brim, making a patch of
+bright cool colour that refreshed the eye. Never had she looked
+prettier than this midsummer morning. Even the fly-spotted
+clouded old glass told her as much as that.</p>
+
+<p>‘If—if he were to be doing the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i> to-day,’ she thought,
+tremulous with excitement, ‘how strange it would be. But
+that’s not likely. He is not of the common class of tourists, who
+all follow the same beaten track. I daresay he will idle away
+the afternoon in the woods, just as he did yesterday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Martha, shall we go to the forest to-day, and leave the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i> to be done to-morrow with Toby?’ Daphne asked, when
+she and her companion were crossing the wide parade-ground,
+where the soldiers trotted by with a great noise and clatter early
+in the morning, with a fanfare of trumpets and an occasional
+roll of a drum. ‘It might seem kinder to poor dear Toby, don’t
+you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it would be very wrong, Daphne,’ answered the
+serious Martha. ‘We told Miss Toby we were going to the
+palace, and we are bound to go straight there and nowhere else.
+Besides, I want to see the pictures and statues and things, and I
+am sick to death of that forest.’</p>
+
+<p>‘After one day! Oh, Martha, what an unromantic soul you
+must have. I could live and die there, if I had pleasant company.
+I have always envied Rosalind and Celia.’</p>
+
+<p>‘They must have been very glad when they got home,’ said
+Martha.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the blinding whiteness of the open street they went in
+at a gate to a gravelled quadrangle, where the sun seemed to
+burn with yet more fiery heat. Even Daphne felt breathless,
+but it was a pleasant feeling, the delight of absolute summer,
+which comes so seldom in the changeful year. Then they went
+under an archway, and into the inner quadrangle, with the
+white palace on all sides of them. It wanted some minutes of
+eleven, and they were shown into a cool official-looking room,
+where they were to wait till the striking of the hour. The
+room was panelled, painted white, a room of Louis the Fourteenth’s
+time most likely; what little furniture there was being
+quaint and rococo, but not old. The blinds were down, the
+shutters half-closed, and the room was in deep shadow.</p>
+
+<p>‘How nice!’ gasped Martha, who had been panting like a
+fish out of water all the way.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is like coming into a grotto,’ said Daphne, sinking into a
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is not half so nice as the forest,’ said a voice in the semi-darkness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</span></p>
+
+<p>Daphne gave a visible start. She had mused upon the
+possibility of meeting her acquaintance of yesterday, and had
+decided that the thing was unlikely. Yet her spirits had been
+buoyed by a lurking idea that he might crop up somehow before
+the day was done. But to find him here at the very beginning
+of things was startling.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you know that we were coming here to-day?’ she
+faltered.</p>
+
+<p>‘Hadn’t the slightest idea; but I wanted to see the place
+myself,’ he answered coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne blushed rosy-red, deeply ashamed of her foolish,
+impulsive speech. The stranger had been sitting in that cool
+shade for the last ten minutes, and his eyes had grown accustomed
+to the obscurity. He saw the blush, he saw the bright
+expressive face under the muslin hat, the slim figure in the
+white frock, every line sharply accentuated against a gray background,
+the slender hand in a long Swedish glove. She looked
+more womanly in her white gown and hat—and yet more childlike—than
+she had looked yesterday in blue and scarlet.</p>
+
+<p>They sat for about five minutes in profound silence.
+Daphne, usually loquacious, felt as if she could not have spoken
+for the world. Martha was by nature stolid and inclined to
+dumbness. The stranger was watching Daphne’s face in a lazy
+reverie, thinking that his hurried sketch of yesterday was not
+half so lovely as the original, and yet it had seemed to him
+almost the prettiest head he had ever painted.</p>
+
+<p>‘The provoking minx has hardly one good feature,’ he
+thought. ‘It is an utterly unpaintable beauty—a beauty of
+colour, life, and movement. Photograph her asleep, and she
+would be as plain as a pike-staff. How different from——’</p>
+
+<p>He gave a faint sigh, and was startled from his musing by
+the door opening with a bang and an official calling out, ‘This
+way, ladies and gentlemen.’</p>
+
+<p>They crossed the blazing courtyard in the wake of a brisk
+little gentleman in uniform, who led them up a flight of stone
+steps, and into a stony hall. Thence to the chapel, and then to
+an upper story, and over polished floors through long suites of
+rooms, everyone made more or less sacred by historical memories.
+Here was the table on which Napoleon the Great signed his
+abdication, while his Old Guard waited in the quadrangle below.
+Daphne looked first at the table and then out of the window,
+almost as if she expected to see that faithful soldiery drawn up
+in the stony courtyard—grim bearded men who had fought and
+conquered on so many a field, victors of Lodi and Arcola,
+Austerlitz and Jena, Friedland and Wagram, and who knew now
+that all was over and their leader’s star had gone down.</p>
+
+<p>Then to rooms hallowed by noble Marie Antoinette, lovely
+alike in felicity and in ruin. Smaller, prettier, more home-like<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</span>
+rooms came next, where the Citizen King and his gentle wife
+tasted the sweetness of calm domestic joys; a tranquil gracious
+family circle; to be transferred, with but a brief interval of
+stormy weather, to the quiet reaches of the Thames, in Horace
+Walpole’s beloved ‘County of Twits.’ Then back to the age of
+tournaments and tented fields; and, lo! they were in the rooms
+which courtly Francis built and adorned, and glorified by his
+august presence. Here, amidst glitter of gold and glow of
+colour, the great King—Charles the Fifth’s rival and victor—lived
+and loved, and shed sunshine upon an adoring court.
+Here from many a canvas, fresh as if painted yesterday, looked
+the faces of the past. Names fraught with romantic memories
+sanctify every nook and corner of the palace. Everywhere
+appears the cypher of Diana of Poitiers linked with that of her
+royal lover, Henry the Second. Catherine de Médicis must have
+looked upon those interlaced initials many a time in the period
+of her probation, looked, and held her peace, and schooled herself
+to patience, waiting till Fortune’s wheel should turn and
+bring her day of power. Here in this long, lofty chamber, sunlit,
+beautiful, the fated Monaldeschi’s life-blood stained the
+polished floor.</p>
+
+<p>‘To say the least of it, the act was an impertinence on
+Queen Christina’s part, seeing that she was only a visitor at
+Fontainebleau,’ said the stranger languidly. ‘Don’t you think
+so, Poppæa?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne required to have the whole story told her; that
+particular event not having impressed itself on her mind.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have read all through Bonnechose’s history of France,
+and half way from the beginning again,’ she explained. ‘But
+when one sits droning history in a row of droning girls, even
+a murder doesn’t make much impression upon one. It’s all put
+in the same dull, dry way. This year there was a great scarcity
+of corn. The poor in the provinces suffered extreme privations.
+Queen Christina, of Sweden, while on a visit at Fontainebleau,
+ordered the execution of her counsellor Monaldeschi. There
+was also a plague at Marseilles. The Dauphin died suddenly in
+the fifteenth year of his age. The king held a Bed of Justice
+for the first time since he ascended the throne. That is the kind
+of thing, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can conceive that so bald a calendar would scarcely take
+a firm grip upon one’s memory,’ assented the stranger. ‘Details
+are apt to impress the mind more than events.’</p>
+
+<p>After this came the rooms which the Pope occupied during
+his captivity—rooms that had double and treble memories; here
+a nuptial-chamber, there a room all a-glitter with gilding—a
+room that had sheltered Charles the Fifth, and afterwards fair,
+and not altogether fortunate, Anne of Austria. Daphne felt as
+if her brain would hardly hold so much history. She felt a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</span>
+kind of relief when they came to a theatre, where plays had
+been acted before Napoleon the Third and his lovely empress in
+days that seemed to belong to her own life.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I was born then,’ she said naïvely.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no other visitors—no tourists of high or
+low degree. The two girls and the unknown had had the palace
+to themselves, and the guide, mollified by a five-franc piece
+slipped into his hand by the gentleman, had allowed them to
+make their circuit at a somewhat more leisurely pace than that
+brisk trot on which he usually insisted.</p>
+
+<p>Yet for all this it was still early when they came down the
+double flight of steps and found themselves once again in the
+quadrangle, the Court of Farewells, so called from the day
+when the great emperor bade adieu to pomp and power, and
+passed like a splendid apparition from the scene he had glorified.
+The sun had lost none of his fervour—nay, had ascended to his
+topmost heaven, and was pouring down his rays upon the baking
+earth.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let us go to the gardens and feed the carp,’ said Nero, and
+it was an infinite relief, were it only for the refreshment of the
+eye, to find themselves under green leaves and by the margin of
+a lovely lake, statues of white marble gleaming yonder at the
+end of verdant arcades, fountains plashing. Here under the
+trees a delicious coolness and stillness contrasted with the glare
+of light on the open space yonder, where an old woman sat at a
+stall, set out with cakes and sweetmeats, ready to supply food
+for the carp-feeders.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes: let us feed the carp,’ cried Daphne, running out into
+this sunlit space, her white gown looking like some saintly
+raiment in the supernatural light of a transfiguration. ‘That
+will be lovely! I have heard of them. They are intensely old,
+are they not—older than the palace itself?’</p>
+
+<p>‘They are said to have been here when Henry and Diana
+walked in yonder alleys,’ replied Nero. ‘I believe they were
+here when the Roman legions conquered Gaul. One thing
+seems as likely as the other, doesn’t it, Poppæa?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know about that: but I like to think they are intensely
+old,’ answered Daphne, leaning on the iron railing, and
+looking down at the fish, which were already competing for her
+favours, feeling assured she meant to feed them.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman got up from her stool, and came over to ask
+if the young lady would like some bread for the carp.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, please—a lot,’ cried Daphne, and she began to fumble
+in her pocket for the little purse with its three or four francs
+and half-francs.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger tossed a franc to the woman before Daphne’s
+hand could get to the bottom of her pocket, and the bread was
+forthcoming—a large hunch off a long loaf. Daphne began<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</span>
+eagerly to feed the fish. They were capital fun, disputing
+vehemently for her bounty, huge gray creatures which looked
+centuries old—savage, artful, vicious exceedingly. She gave
+them each a name. One she called Francis, another Henry,
+another Diana, another Catherine. She was as pleased and
+amused as a child, now throwing her bit of bread as far as her
+arm could fling it, and laughing merrily at the eager rush of
+competitors, now luring them close to the rails, and smiling
+down at the gray snouts yawning for their prey.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think they would eat me if I were to tumble in
+among them?’ asked Daphne. ‘Greedy creatures! They seem
+ravenous enough for anything. There! they have devoured all
+my bread.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shall I buy you some more?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please, no. This kind of thing might go on for ever.
+They are insatiable. You would be ruined.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shall we go under the trees?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you like. But don’t you think this sunshine delicious?
+It is so nice to bask. I think I am rather like a cat in my
+enjoyment of the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your friend seems to have had enough of it,’ said Nero,
+glancing towards a sheltered bench to which Miss Dibb had
+discreetly withdrawn herself.</p>
+
+<p>‘Martha! I had almost forgotten her existence. The carp
+are so absorbing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let us stay in the sunshine. We can rejoin your friend
+presently. She has taken out her needlework, and seems to be
+enjoying herself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Another strip of her everlasting counterpane,’ said Daphne.
+‘That girl’s persevering industry is maddening. It makes one
+feel so abominably idle. Would you be very shocked to know
+that I detest needlework?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should as soon expect a butterfly to be fond of needlework
+as you,’ answered Nero. ‘Let me see your hand.’</p>
+
+<p>She had taken off her glove to feed the carp, and her hand
+lay upon the iron rail, dazzlingly white in the sunshine; Nero
+took it up in his, so gently, so reverently, that she could not
+resent the action. He took it as a priest or physician might
+have taken it: altogether with a professional or scientific air.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know that I am a student of chiromancy?’ he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘How should I, when I don’t know anything about you?
+And I don’t even know what chiromancy is.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The science of reading fate and character from the configuration
+of the hand.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, that is what gipsies pretend to do,’ cried Daphne.
+‘You surely cannot believe in such nonsense.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know that my belief goes very far; but I have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</span>
+found the study full of interest, and more than once I have
+stumbled upon curious truths.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So do the most ignorant gipsy fortune-tellers,’ retorted
+Daphne. ‘People who are always guessing must sometimes
+guess right. But you may tell my fortune all the same, please;
+it will be more amusing than the carp.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you approach the subject in such an irreverent spirit, I
+don’t think I will have anything to say to you. Remember, I
+have gone into this question thoroughly, from a scientific point
+of view.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sure you are wonderfully clever,’ said Daphne; and
+then, in a coaxing voice, with a lovely look from the sparkling
+gray eyes, she pleaded: ‘Pray tell my fortune. I shall be
+wretched if you refuse.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And I should be wretched if I were to disoblige you.
+Your left hand, please, and be serious, for it is a very solemn
+ordeal.’</p>
+
+<p>She gave him her left hand. He turned the soft rosy
+childish palm to the sunlight, and pored over it as intently as if
+it had been some manuscript treatise of Albertus Magnus,
+written in cypher, to be understood only by the hierophant in
+science.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are of a fitful temper,’ he said, ‘and do not make
+many friends. Yet you are capable of loving intensely—one or
+two persons perhaps, not more; indeed, I think only one at a
+time, for your nature is concentrative rather than diffuse.’</p>
+
+<p>He spoke slowly and deliberately—coldly indifferent as an
+antique oracle—with his eyes upon her hand all the time. He
+took no note of the changes in her expressive face, which would
+have told him that he had hit the truth.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are apt to be dissatisfied with life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, indeed I am,’ she cried, with a weary sigh; ‘there are
+times when I do so hate my life and all things belonging to me—except
+just one person—that I would change places with any
+peasant-girl trudging home from market.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are romantic, variable. You do not care for beaten
+paths, and have a hankering for the wild and strange. You
+love the sea better than the land, the night better than the day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are a wizard,’ cried Daphne, remembering her wild
+delight in the dancing waves as she stood on the deck of the
+Channel steamer, her intense love of the winding river at home—the
+deep, rapid stream—and of fresh salt breezes, and a free
+ocean life; remembering, too, how her soul had thrilled with
+rapture in the shadowy courtyard last night, when her shuttlecock
+flew up towards the moon. ‘You have a wonderful knack
+of finding out things,’ she said. ‘Go on, please.’</p>
+
+<p>He had dropped her hand suddenly, and was looking up at
+her with intense earnestness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Please go on,’ she repeated impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have done. There is no more to be told.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nonsense. I know you are keeping back something; I can
+see it in your face. There is something unpleasant—or something
+strange—I could see it in the way you looked at me just
+now. I insist upon knowing everything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Insist! I am only a fortune-teller so far as it pleases me.
+Do you think if a man’s hand told me that he was destined to
+be hanged, I should make him uneasy by saying so?’</p>
+
+<p>‘But my case is not so bad as that?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; not quite so bad as that,’ he answered lightly, trying
+to smile.</p>
+
+<p>The whole thing seemed more or less a joke; but there are
+some natures so sensitive that they tremble at the lightest touch;
+and Daphne felt uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do tell me what it was,’ she urged earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear child, I have no more to tell you. The hand shows
+character rather than fate. Your character is as yet but half
+developed. If you want a warning, I would say to you: Beware
+of the strength of your own nature. In that lies your greatest
+danger. Life is easiest to those who can take it lightly—who
+can bend their backs to any burden, and be grateful for every
+ray of sunshine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ she answered contemptuously; ‘for the drudges. But
+please tell me the rest. I know you read something in these
+queer little lines and wrinkles,’ scrutinising her pink palm as she
+spoke, ‘something strange and startling—for you were startled.
+You can’t deny that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not going to admit or deny anything,’ said Nero, with
+a quiet firmness that conquered her, resolute as she was when
+her own pleasure or inclination was in question. ‘The oracle
+has spoken. Make the most you can of his wisdom.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have told me nothing,’ she said, pouting, but submissive.</p>
+
+<p>‘And now let us go out of this bakery, under the trees
+yonder, where your friend looks so happy with her crochet-work.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think we ought to go home,’ hesitated Daphne, not in the
+least as if she meant it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Home! nonsense. It isn’t one o’clock yet; and you don’t
+dine at one, do you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘We dine at six,’ replied Daphne with dignity, ‘but we sometimes
+lunch at half-past one.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your luncheon isn’t a very formidable affair, is it—hardly
+worth going home for?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It will keep,’ said Daphne. ‘If there is anything more to
+be seen, Martha and I may as well stop and see it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There are the gardens, beyond measure lovely on such a
+day as this; and there is the famous vinery; and, I think, if<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</span>
+we could find a very retired spot out of the ken of yonder
+beardless patrol, I might smuggle in the materials for another
+picnic.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That would be too delightful,’ cried Daphne, clapping her
+hands in childish glee, forgetful of fate and clairvoyance.</p>
+
+<p>They strolled slowly through the blinding heat towards that
+cool grove where patient Martha sat weaving her web, as inflexible
+in her stolid industry as if she had been one of the fatal
+sisters.</p>
+
+<p>‘What have you been doing all this time, Daphne?’ she
+asked, lifting up her eyes as they approached.</p>
+
+<p>‘Feeding the carp. You have no idea what fun they are.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder you are not afraid of a sunstroke.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am never afraid of anything, and I love the sun. Come,
+Martha, roll up that everlasting crochet, and come for a ramble.
+We are going to explore the gardens, and by-and-by Mr. Nero
+is going to get us some lunch.’</p>
+
+<p>Martha looked at the unknown doubtfully, yet not without
+favour. She was a good, conscientious girl: but she was fond
+of her meals, and a luncheon in the cool shade of these lovely
+groves would be very agreeable. She fancied, too, that the
+stranger would be a good caterer. He was much more carefully
+dressed to-day, in a gray travelling suit. Everything about him
+looked fresh and bright, and suggestive of easy circumstances.
+She began to think that Daphne was right, and that he was no
+Bohemian artist, living from hand to mouth, but a gentleman of
+position, and that it would not be so very awkward to meet him
+in Regent street, when she should be shopping with mamma and
+Jane.</p>
+
+<p>They strolled along the leafy aisle on the margin of the blue
+bright lake, faintly stirred by lightest zephyrs. They admired
+the marble figures of nymph and dryad, which Martha thought
+would have looked better if they had been more elaborately
+clad. They wasted half an hour in happy idleness, enjoying
+the air, the cool umbrage of lime and chestnut, the glory of the
+distant light yonder on green sward or blue placid lake, enjoying
+Nature as she should be enjoyed, in perfect carelessness of
+mind and heart—as Horace enjoyed his Sabine wood, singing his
+idle praise of Lalage as he wandered, empty of care.</p>
+
+<p>They found at last an utterly secluded spot, where no eye
+of military or civil authority could reach them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, if you two young ladies will only be patient, and
+amuse yourselves here for a quarter of an hour or so, I will see
+what can be done in the smuggling line,’ said the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>‘I could stay here for a week,’ said Daphne, establishing herself
+comfortably on the velvet turf, while Martha pulled out her
+work-bag and resumed her crochet-hook. ‘Take your time, Mr.
+Nero. I am going to sleep.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</span></p>
+
+<p>She threw off her muslin hat, and laid her cheek upon the
+soft mossy bank, letting her pale golden hair fall like a veil
+over her neck and shoulders. They were in the heart of a green
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bosquet</i>, far from the palace, far from the beaten track of
+tourists. Nero stopped at a curve in the path to look back at
+the recumbent figure, the sunny falling hair, the exquisite tint
+of cheek and chin and lips, just touched by the sun-ray glinting
+through a break in the foliage. He stood for a few momenta
+admiring this living picture, and then walked slowly down the
+avenue.</p>
+
+<p>‘A curious idle way of wasting a day,’ he mused; ‘but when
+a man has nothing particular to do with his days he may as well
+waste them one way as another. How lovely the child is in her
+imperfection! a faulty beauty—a faulty nature—but full of fascination.
+I must write a description of her in my next letter to
+my dear one. How interested she would feel in this childish,
+undisciplined character.’</p>
+
+<p>But somehow when his next letter to the lady of his love
+came to be written he was in a lazy mood, and did not mention
+Daphne. The subject, to be interesting, required to be treated
+in detail, and he did not feel himself equal to the task.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t he nice?’ asked Daphne, when the unknown had departed.</p>
+
+<p>‘He is very gentlemanlike,’ assented Martha, ‘but still I feel
+we are doing wrong in encouraging him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Encouraging him!’ echoed her schoolfellow. ‘You talk as if
+he were a stray cur that had followed us.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You perfectly well know what I mean, Daphne. It cannot
+be right to get acquainted with a strange gentleman as we have
+done. I wouldn’t have mamma or Jane know of it for the
+world.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then don’t tell them,’ said Daphne, yawning listlessly, and
+opening her rosy palm for a nondescript green insect to crawl
+over it.</p>
+
+<p>‘But it seems such a want of candour,’ objected Martha.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then tell them, and defy them. But whatever you do, don’t
+be fussy, you dear good-natured old Martha; for of all things
+fussiness is the most detestable in hot weather. As for Mr. Nero,
+he will be off and away across the Jura before to-morrow night,
+I daresay, and he will forget us, and we shall forget him, and the
+thing will be all over and done with. I wish he would bring us
+our luncheon. I’m hungry.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I feel rather faint,’ admitted Martha, who thought it ungenteel
+to confess absolute hunger. ‘That bread we get for
+breakfast is all sponginess. Shall you tell your sister about Mr.
+Nero?’</p>
+
+<p>‘That depends. I may, perhaps, if I should be hard up for
+something to say to her.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you think she would be angry?’</p>
+
+<p>‘She never is angry. She is all sweetness and goodness, and
+belief in other people. I have spent very little of my life with
+her, or I should be ever so much better than I am. I should
+have grown up like her perhaps—or just a little like her, for I’m
+afraid the clay is different—if my father would have let me be
+brought up at home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And he wouldn’t?’ asked Martha.</p>
+
+<p>She had heard her friend’s history very often, or as much of
+it as Daphne cared to tell, but she was always interested in the
+subject, and encouraged her schoolfellow’s egotism. Daphne’s
+people belonged to a world which Miss Dibb could never hope
+to enter; though perhaps Daphne’s father, Sir Vernon Lawford,
+had no larger income than Mr. Dibb, whose furniture and general
+surroundings were the best and most gorgeous that money
+could buy.</p>
+
+<p>‘No. When I was a little thing I was sent to a lady at
+Brighton, who kept a select school for little things; because my
+father could not bear a small child about the house. When I
+grew too tall for my frocks, and was all stocking and long hair,
+I was transferred to a very superior establishment at Cheltenham,
+because my father could not be worried by the spectacle
+of an awkward growing girl. When I grew still taller, and was
+almost a young woman, I was packed off to Madame Tolmache
+to be finished; and I am to be finished early next year, I believe,
+and then I am to go home, and my father will have to endure
+me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How nice for you to go home for good! And your home is
+very beautiful, is it not?’ asked Martha, who had heard it described
+a hundred times.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a lovely house in Warwickshire, all amongst meadows
+and winding streams—a long, low, white house, don’t you know,
+with no end of verandahs and balconies. I have been there very
+little, as you may imagine, but I love the dear old place all the
+same.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think I should like to live so far in the country,’ said
+Martha: ‘Clapham is so much nicer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Connais pas</i>,’ said Daphne indifferently.</p>
+
+<p>The unknown came sauntering back along the leafy arcade,
+but not alone; an individual quite as fashionably clad, and of
+appearance as gentlemanlike, walked a pace or two behind him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, young ladies, I have succeeded splendidly as a smuggler;
+but I thought two could bring more than one, so I engaged
+an ally. Now, Dickson, produce the Cliquot.’</p>
+
+<p>The individual addressed as Dickson took a gold-topped pint
+bottle out of each side-pocket. He then, from some crafty lurking-place,
+drew forth a crockery encased pie, some knives and
+forks, and a couple of napkins, while Nero emptied his own<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</span>
+pockets, and spread their contents on the turf. He had brought
+some wonderful cherries—riper and sweeter-looking than French
+fruit usually is—several small white paper packages which suggested
+confectionery, a tumbler, and half-a-dozen rolls, which he
+had artfully disposed in his various pockets.</p>
+
+<p>‘We must have looked rather bulky,’ he said; ‘but I suppose
+the custodians of the place were too sleepy to take any notice of
+us. The nippers, Dickson? Yes! Thoughtful man! You can
+come back in an hour for the bottles and the pie-dish.’</p>
+
+<p>Dickson bowed respectfully and retired.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that your valet?’ asked Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘He has the misfortune to fill that thankless office.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>‘And you travel with your own servant?’ she exclaimed. ‘It
+is too absurd! Do you know that yesterday I took you for a
+poor strolling artist, and I felt that it would be an act of charity
+to give you half-a-guinea for that sketch?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You would not have obtained it from me for a thousand
+half-guineas. No; I do not belong to the hard-up section of
+humanity. Perhaps many a penniless scamp is a better and
+happier man than I; but, although poverty is the school for
+heroes, I have never regretted that it was not my lot to be a
+pupil in that particular academy. And now, young ladies, fall
+to, if you please. Here is a Perigord pie, which I am assured
+is the best that Strasbourg can produce, and here are a few
+pretty tiny kickshaws in the way of pastry; and here, to wash
+these trifles down, is a bottle of the Widow Cliquot’s champagne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know that I ever tasted champagne in my life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How odd!’ cried Martha. ‘What, not at juvenile parties?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have never been at any juvenile parties.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We have it often at home,’ said Martha, with a swelling
+consciousness of belonging to wealthy people. ‘At picnics, and
+whenever there is company to luncheon. The grown-ups have
+it every evening at dinner, if they like. Papa takes a particular
+pride in his champagne.’</p>
+
+<p>They grouped themselves upon the grass, hidden from all the
+outside world by rich summer foliage, much more alone than
+they had been yesterday in the heart of the forest. Honest
+Martha Dibb, who had been sorely affronted at the free-and-easiness
+of yesterday’s simple meal, offered no objection to the
+luxurious feast of to-day. A man who travelled with his valet
+could not be altogether an objectionable person. The whole
+thing was unconventional—slightly incorrect, even—but there
+was no longer any fear that they were making friends with a
+vagabond, who might turn up in after life and ask for small loans.</p>
+
+<p>‘He is evidently a gentleman,’ thought Martha, quite overcome
+by the gentility of the valet. ‘I daresay papa and mamma
+would be glad to know him.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</span></p>
+
+<p>Her spirits enlivened by the champagne, Miss Dibb became
+talkative.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know Clapham Common?’ she asked the stranger.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have heard of such a place. I believe I have driven past
+it occasionally on my way to Epsom,’ he answered listlessly, with
+his eyes on Daphne, who was seated in a lazy attitude, her back
+supported by the trunk of a lime-tree, her head resting against
+the brown bark, which made a sombre background for her yellow
+hair, her arms hanging loose at her sides in perfect restfulness,
+her face and attitude alike expressing a dreamy softness,
+as of one for whom the present hour is enough, and all time
+and life beyond it no more than a vague dream. She had just
+touched the brim of the champagne glass with her lips and that
+was all. She had pronounced the Perigord pie the nastiest thing
+that she had ever tasted; and she had lunched luxuriously upon
+pastry and cherries.</p>
+
+<p>‘I live on Clapham Common, when I am at home,’ said
+Martha. ‘Papa has bought a large house, with a Corinthian
+portico, and we have ever so many hot-houses. Papa takes particular
+pride in his grapes and pines. Are you fond of pines?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not particularly,’ answered Nero, stifling a yawn. ‘And
+where do you live when you are at home, my pretty Poppæa?’
+he asked, smiling at Daphne, who had lifted one languid arm to
+convey a ripe red cherry to lips that were as fresh and rosy as
+the fruit.</p>
+
+<p>‘In Oxford Street,’ answered Daphne coolly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Dibb’s eyebrows went up in horrified wonder; she gave
+a little gasp, as who should say, ‘This is too much!’ but did not
+venture a contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>‘In Oxford Street? Why, that is quite a business thoroughfare.
+Is your father in trade?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes. He keeps an Italian warehouse.’</p>
+
+<p>Martha became red as a turkey-cock. This was a liberty
+which she felt she ought to resent at once; but, sooth to say,
+the matter-of-fact Martha had a wholesome awe of her friend.
+Daphne was very sweet; Daphne and she were sworn allies:
+but Daphne had a sharp tongue, and could let fly little shafts
+of speech, half playful, half satiric, that pierced her friend to the
+quick.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope there is nothing that I need be ashamed of in my
+father’s trade,’ she said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not,’ faltered the stranger. ‘Trade is a most
+honourable employment of capital and intelligence. I have the
+greatest respect for the trading classes—but——’</p>
+
+<p>‘But you seemed surprised when I told you my father’s position.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I confess that I was surprised. You don’t look like a
+tradesman’s daughter, somehow. If you had told me that your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</span>
+father was a painter, or a poet, or an actor even, I should have
+thought it the most natural thing in the world. You look as if
+you were allied to the arts.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that a polite way of saying that I don’t look quite respectable?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not going to tell you what I mean. You would say I
+was paying you compliments, and I believe you have tabooed all
+compliments. I may be ruder than Petruchio—didn’t you tell
+me so in the forest yesterday?—but any attempt at playing Sir
+Charles Grandison will be resented.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I certainly like you best when you are rude,’ answered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>She was not as animated as she had been yesterday during
+their homeward walk. The heat and the supreme stillness of
+the spot invited silence and repose. She was, perhaps, a little
+tired by the exploration of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i>. She sat under the
+drooping branches of the lime, whose blossoms sweetened all
+the air, half in light, half in shadow: while Martha, who had
+eaten a hearty luncheon, and consumed nearly a pint of Cliquot,
+plodded on with her crochet-work, and tried to keep the unknown
+in conversation.</p>
+
+<p>She asked him if he had seen this, and that, and the other—operas,
+theatres, horticultural fêtes—labouring hard to make
+him understand that her people were in the very best society—as
+if opera-boxes and horticultural fêtes meant society! and
+succeeded only in boring him outrageously.</p>
+
+<p>He would have been content to sit in dreamy silence watching
+Daphne eat her cherries. Such an occupation seemed
+best suited to the sultry summer silence, the perfumed atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>But Martha thought silence must mean dulness.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are dreadfully quiet to-day,’ she said. ‘We must do
+something to get the steam up. Shall we have some riddles?
+I know lots of good ones that I didn’t ask you yesterday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t,’ cried Nero; ‘I am not equal to it. I think a
+single conundrum would crush me. Let us sit and dream.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“How sweet it were, hearing the downward stream,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">With half-shut eyes ever to seem</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Falling asleep in a half-dream!</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">To dream and dream, like yonder amber light,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Which will not leave the myrrh-bush on the height.”’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>Martha looked round inquiringly. She did not see either
+myrrh-bush or height in the landscape. They were in a level
+bit of the park, shut in by trees.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that poetry?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, it’s the nearest approach to it that the last half-century
+has produced,’ replied the unknown, and then he went on
+quoting:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘“But propt on beds of amaranth and moly,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">How sweet (while warm airs lull us blowing lowly),</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">With half-dropt eyelids still,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">Beneath a heaven dark and holy,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">To watch the long bright river drawing slowly</div>
+    <div class="verse indent2">His waters from the purple hill.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent">Poppæa, I wish you and I were queen and king of a Lotos
+Island, and could idle away our lives in perpetual summer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We should soon grow tired of it,’ answered Daphne. ‘I am
+like the little boy in the French story-book. I delight in all the
+seasons. And I daresay you skate, hunt, and do all manner of
+things that couldn’t be done in summer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘True, my astute empress. But when one is setting under
+lime-boughs on such a day as this, eternal summer seems your
+only idea of happiness.’</p>
+
+<p>He gave himself up to idle musing. Yes; he was surprised,
+disappointed even, at the notion of this bright-haired nymph’s
+parentage. There was no discredit in being a tradesman’s
+daughter. He was very far from feeling a contempt for commerce.
+There were reasons in his own history why he should
+have considerable respect for successful trade. But for this girl
+he had imagined a different pedigree. She had a high-bred air—even
+in her reckless unconventionally—which accorded ill
+with his idea of a prosperous tradesman’s daughter. There
+was a poetry in her every look and movement, a wild untutored
+grace, which was the strangest of all flowers to have blossomed
+in a parlour behind a London shop. Reared in the smoke and
+grime of Oxford Street! Brought up amidst ever present considerations
+of pounds, shillings, and pence! The girl and her
+surroundings were so incongruous that the mere idea of them
+worried him.</p>
+
+<p>‘And by-and-by she will marry some bloated butcher or
+pompous coach-builder, and spend all her days among the newly
+rich,’ he thought. ‘She will grow into the fat wife of a fat
+alderman, and overdress and overeat herself, and live a life of
+prosperous vulgarity.’</p>
+
+<p>The notion was painful to him, and he was obliged to remind
+himself that there was very little likelihood of his ever seeing
+this girl again, so that the natural commonplaceness of her fate
+could make very little difference to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Better to be vulgarly prosperous and live to be a great-grandmother
+than to fulfil the prophecy written on her hand,’
+he said to himself. ‘What does it matter? Let us enjoy
+to-day, and let the long line of to-morrows rest in the shadow
+that wraps the unknown future. To-morrow I shall be on
+my way to Geneva, panting and stifling in a padded railway-carriage,
+with oily Frenchmen, who will insist upon having the
+windows up through the heat and dust of the long summer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</span>
+day, and I shall look back with envy to this delicious afternoon.’</p>
+
+<p>They sat under the limes for a couple of hours, talking a
+little now and then in a desultory way; Martha trying her
+hardest to impress the unknown with the grandeurs and splendours
+of Lebanon Lodge, Clapham Common; Daphne saying
+very little, content to sit in the shade and dream. Then having
+taken their fill of rest and shadow, they ventured out into the
+sun, and went to see the famous grapery, and then Martha
+looked at her watch and protested that they must go home to
+tea. Miss Toby would be expecting them.</p>
+
+<p>Nero went with them to the gates of the palace, and would
+fain have gone further, but Daphne begged him to leave them
+there.</p>
+
+<p>‘You would only frighten our poor governess,’ she said.
+‘She would think it quite a terrible thing for us to have made
+your acquaintance. Please go back to your hotel at once.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you command me to do so, I must obey,’ said Nero
+politely.</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with them for the first time, gravely lifted
+his hat, and walked across to his hotel. It was on the opposite
+side of the way, a big white house, with a garden in front of it,
+and a fountain playing. The two girls stood in the shadow
+watching him.</p>
+
+<p>‘He is really very nice,’ said Martha. ‘I think mamma
+would like to have him at one of her dinner-parties. But he
+did not tell us anything about himself, did he?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne did not hear her. There was hardly room in that
+girlish brain for all the thoughts that were crowding into it.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘CURTEIS SHE WAS, DISCRETE, AND DEBONAIRE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> world was nine months older since Daphne picnicked
+in the park at Fontainebleau, and the scenery of her life was
+changed to a fair English landscape in one of the fairest of
+English shires. Here, in fertile Warwickshire, within three
+miles of Shakespeare’s birthplace, within a drive of Warwick
+and Leamington, and Kenilworth, and Stoneleigh Park, to say
+nothing of ribbon-weaving, watch-making Coventry, Daphne
+wandered in happy idleness through the low-lying water-meadows,
+which bounded the sloping lawns and shady gardens of
+South Hill.</p>
+
+<p>South Hill was a gentle elevation in the midst of a pastoral
+valley. A long, low, white house, which had been added to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</span>
+from time to time, crowned the grassy slope, and from its balconied
+windows commanded one of the prettiest views in England—a
+landscape purely pastoral and rustic; low meadows
+through which the Avon wound his silvery way between sedgy
+banks, with here a willowy islet, and there a flowery creek.
+On one side the distant roofs and gables and tall spire of Stratford,
+seen above intervening wood and water; on the other a
+gentle undulating landscape, bounded by a range of hills purple
+with distance.</p>
+
+<p>It was not an old house. There was nothing historical
+about it; though South Hill, with between three and four
+hundred acres, had belonged to Sir Vernon Lawford’s family
+since the reign of Elizabeth. There had been an ancient mansion;
+but the ancient mansion, being an unhealthy barrack of
+small low rooms, and requiring the expenditure of five thousand
+pounds to make it healthy and habitable, Sir Vernon’s father
+had conceived the idea that he could make a better use of his
+money if he pulled down the old house and built himself a
+new one: whereupon the venerable pile was demolished, much
+to the disgust of archæologists, and an Italian villa rose from
+its ashes: a house with wide French windows opening into
+broad verandahs, delicious places in which to waste a summer
+morning, or the idle after-dinner hour watching the sunset.
+All the best rooms at South Hill faced the south-west, and
+the sunsets there seemed to Madoline Lawford more beautiful
+than anywhere else in the world. It was a house of the simplest
+form, built for ease and comfort rather than for architectural
+display. There were long cool corridors, lofty rooms below and
+above stairs, a roomy hall, a broad shallow staircase, and at one
+end of the house a spacious conservatory which had been added
+by Sir Vernon soon after his marriage. This conservatory was
+the great feature of South Hill. It was a lofty stone building,
+with a double flight of marble steps descending from the drawing-room
+to the billiard-room below. Thus drawing-room and
+billiard-room both commanded a full view of the conservatory
+through wide glass doors.</p>
+
+<p>There were melancholy associations for Sir Vernon Lawford
+in this wing which he had added to South Hill. He had built
+it to give pleasure to his first wife, an heiress, and the most
+amiable of women: but before the building was finished the
+first Lady Lawford was in her grave, leaving a baby girl of
+two months old behind her. The widower grieved intensely;
+but he proved no exception to the general rule that the more
+intense the sorrow of the bereaved the more speedily does he
+or she seek consolation in new ties. Sir Vernon married again
+within two years of his wife’s death; and, this time, instead of
+giving satisfaction to the county by choosing one of the best
+born and wealthiest ladies within its length and breadth, he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</span>
+picked up his wife somewhere on the Continent—a fact which
+in the opinion of the county was much in her disfavour—and
+when he brought her home and introduced her to his friends,
+he was singularly reticent as to her previous history.</p>
+
+<p>The county people shrugged their shoulders, and doubted if
+this marriage would end well. They had some years later the
+morbid satisfaction of being able to say that they had prophesied
+aright. The second Lady Lawford bore her husband two
+children, a boy and a girl, and within a year of her daughter’s
+birth mysteriously disappeared. She went to the South of
+France, it was said, for her lungs; though everybody’s latest recollection
+of her was of a young woman in the heyday of health,
+strength, and beauty; somewhat self-willed, very extravagant,
+inordinately fond of pleasure, and governing her husband with
+the insolence of conscious beauty.</p>
+
+<p>From that southern journey she never came back. Nobody
+ever heard any explicit account of her death; yet after two or
+three years it became an accepted fact that she was dead. Sir
+Vernon travelled a good deal, while his maiden sister kept house
+for him at South Hill, and superintended the rearing of his
+children. Madoline, daughter and heiress of the first Lady
+Lawford, was brought up and educated at home. Loftus, the
+boy, went to a private tutor at Stratford, and thence to Rugby,
+where he fell ill and died. Daphne’s childhood and early girlhood
+were spent almost entirely at school. Only a week ago
+she was still at Asnières, grinding away at the everlasting prosy
+old books, reciting Lafontaine’s fables, droning out long singsong
+speeches from Athalie or Iphigénie, teasing poor patient
+Miss Toby, domineering over Martha Dibb. And now her
+education was supposed to be finished, and she was free—free
+to roam like a wild thing about the lovely grounds at South
+Hill, in the water-meadows where the daffodils grew in such
+rank luxuriance; and where, years ago, when she was a little
+child, and had crowned herself with a chaplet of those yellow
+flowers, scarcely brighter than her hair, a painter-friend of her
+father’s had called her Asphodel.</p>
+
+<p>How well she remembered that sunny morning in early
+April—ages ago! Childhood seems so far off at seventeen.
+How distinctly she remembered the artist whose refined and
+gentle manners had won her childish heart! She had been so
+little praised at South Hill that her pulses thrilled with pleasure
+when her father’s friend smiled at her flower-crowned head
+and cried: ‘What a lovely picture! Look, Lawford, would
+not you like me to paint her just as she is at this moment,
+with her hair flying in the wind, and that background of rushes
+and blue water?’ But Sir Vernon turned on his heel with a
+curt half-muttered answer, and the two men walked on and left
+her, smoking their cigarettes as they went. She remembered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</span>
+how, in a blind childish fury, scarce knowing why she was
+angry, she tore the daffodil crown from her hair and trampled
+it under foot.</p>
+
+<p>To the end of his visit the painter called her Asphodel, and
+one morning finding her alone in the garden, he carried her off
+to the billiard-room and made a sketch of her head with its
+loose tangled hair: a head which appeared next year on the
+line at the Royal Academy and was raved about by all artistic
+London.</p>
+
+<p>And now it was early April again, and she was a girl in the
+fair dawn of womanhood, free to do what she liked with her
+life, and there were many things that she was beginning to
+understand, things not altogether pleasant to her womanly
+pride. She was beginning to perceive very clearly that her
+father did not love her, and was never likely to love her, that
+her presence in his home gave him no pleasure, that he simply
+endured her as part of the burden of life, while to her sister he
+gave love without stint or measure. True that he was by
+nature and habit selfish and self-indulgent, and that the love
+of such a man is at best hardly worth having. But Daphne
+would have been glad of her father’s love, were the affection of
+ever so poor a quality. His indifference chilled her soul. She
+had been accustomed to command affection; to be petted and
+praised and bowed down to for her pretty looks and pretty ways;
+to take a leading position with her schoolfellows, partly because
+she was Sir Vernon Lawford’s daughter, and partly for those
+subtle charms and graces which made her superior to the rank
+and file of school-girls.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, though Sir Vernon was wanting in affection for his
+younger daughter, Daphne was not unloved at South Hill.
+Her sister Madoline loved her dearly, had so loved her ever
+since those unforgotten summer days when the grave girl of
+nine and the toddling two-year-old baby wandered hand-in-hand
+in shrubberies and gardens, and seemed to have the whole
+domain of South Hill to themselves, Sir Vernon and Lady
+Lawford being somewhere on the Continent, and the maiden
+aunt being a lady very much in request in the best society in
+the neighbourhood, and very willing to take the utmost enjoyment
+out of life, and to delegate her duties to nurses and maids.
+The love that had grown up in those days between the sisters
+had been in no wise lessened by severance. They were as devoted
+to each other now as they had been in the dawn of life:
+Madoline loving Daphne with a proud protecting love; Daphne
+looking up to Madoline with intense respect, and believing in
+her as the most perfect of women.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid I shall never be able to leave off talking,’ said
+Daphne upon this particular April morning, when she had
+come in from a long ramble by the Avon, with her apron full<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</span>
+of daffodils; ‘I seem to have such a world of things to tell
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t put any check upon your eloquence, darling. You
+won’t tire me,’ said Madoline in her low gentle voice.</p>
+
+<p>She had a very soft voice, and a slow calm way of speaking,
+which seemed to most people to be the true patrician tone.
+She spoke like a person who had never been in a hurry, and had
+never been in a passion.</p>
+
+<p>The sisters were in Madoline’s morning-room, sometimes
+called the old drawing-room, as it had been the chief reception-room
+at South Hill before Sir Vernon built the west wing. It
+was a large airy room, painted white, with chintz draperies of
+the lightest and most delicate tints—apple-blossoms on a creamy
+ground; the furniture all of light woods; the china celadon
+or turquoise; but the chief beauty of the room, its hot-house
+flowers—tulips, gardenias, arums, hyacinths, pansies, grouped
+with exquisite taste on tables and in jardinières, on brackets
+and mantelpiece. The love of flowers was almost a passion
+with Madoline Lawford, and she was rich enough to indulge
+this inclination to her heart’s content. She had built a long
+line of hot-houses in one of the lower gardens, and kept a
+small regiment of gardeners and boys. She could afford to do
+this, and yet to be Lady Bountiful in all the district round about
+South Hill; so nobody ventured to blame her for the money
+she spent upon horticulture.</p>
+
+<p>She was a very handsome woman—handsome in that perfectly
+regular style about which there can be no difference of
+opinion. Some might call her beauty cold, but all must own
+she was beautiful. Her profile was strongly marked, the forehead
+high and broad, the nose somewhat aquiline; the mouth
+proud, calm, resolute, yet infinitely sweet when she smiled;
+the eyes almost black, with long dark lashes, sculptured eyelids,
+and delicately-pencilled brows. She wore her hair as she
+might have worn it had she lived in the days of Pericles and
+Aspasia—simply drawn back from her forehead, and twisted
+in a heavy Greek knot at the back of her head; no fringed
+locks or fluffiness gave their factitious charm to her face. Her
+beauty was of that calm statuesque type which has nothing to
+do with chic, piquancy, dash, audacity, or any of those qualities
+which go such a long way in the composition of modern
+loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>All her tastes were artistic; but her love of art showed itself
+rather in the details of daily life than in any actual achievement
+with brush or pencil. She worked exquisitely in crewels and
+silks, drew her own designs from natural flowers, and produced
+embroideries on linen or satin which were worthy to be hung in
+a picture-gallery. She had a truly feminine love of needlework,
+and was never idle—in this the very reverse of Daphne, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</span>
+loved to loll at ease, looking lazily at the sky or the landscape,
+and making up her mind to be tremendously busy by-and-by
+Daphne was always beginning work, and never finishing anything;
+while every task undertaken by Madoline was carried on
+to completion. The very essence of her own character was
+completeness—fulfilling every duty to the uttermost, satisfying
+in fullest measure every demand which home or society could
+make upon her.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure you’ll be tired of me, Lina,’ protested Daphne,
+kneeling on the fender-stool, while Madoline sat at work in her
+accustomed place, with a Japanese bamboo table at her side for
+the accommodation of her crewels. ‘You can’t imagine what a
+capacity I have for talking.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I must be very dull,’ murmured Madoline, smiling at
+her. ‘You have been home a week.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, certainly, you have had some experience of me; but
+you might think my loquacity a temporary affliction, and that
+when I had said my say after nearly two years of separation—oh,
+Lina, how horrid it was spending all my holidays at Asnières!—I
+should subside into comparative silence. But I shall always
+have worlds to tell you. It is my nature to say everything that
+comes into my mind. That’s why I got on so well with Dibb.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was Dibb a dog, dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A dog!’ cried Daphne, with a sparkling smile. ‘No, Dibb
+was my schoolfellow—a dear good thing—stupid, clumsy, innately
+vulgar, but devoted to me. “A poor thing, but mine own,”
+as Touchstone says. We were tremendous chums.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sorry you should make a friend of any innately vulgar
+girl, Daphne dear,’ said Madoline gravely; ‘and don’t you think
+it rather vulgar to talk of your friend as Dibb?’</p>
+
+<p>‘We all did it,’ answered Daphne with a shrug; ‘I was always
+called Lawford. It saves trouble, and sounds friendly.
+You talk about Disraeli and Gladstone; why not Dibb and
+Lawford?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think there’s a difference, Daphne. If you were very
+friendly with this Miss Dibb, why not speak of her by her
+Christian name?’</p>
+
+<p>‘So be it, my dearest. In future she shall be Martha, to
+please you. She really is a good inoffensive soul. Her father
+keeps a big shop in Oxford Street; but the family live in a
+palace on Clapham Common, with gardens, and vineries, and
+pineries, and goodness knows what. When I call her vulgar it
+is because she and all her people are so proud of their money,
+and measure everything by the standard of money. Martha
+was very inquisitive about my means. She wanted to know
+whether I was rich or poor, and I really couldn’t inform her.
+Which am I, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked up at her sister as if it were a question about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</span>
+which she was slightly curious, but not a matter of supreme moment.
+A faint flush mounted to Madoline’s calm brow. The
+soft dark eyes looked tenderly at Daphne’s eager face.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, why trouble yourself about the money question?
+Have you ever felt the inconvenience of poverty?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never. You sent me everything I could possibly wish for;
+and I always had more pocket-money than any girl in the school,
+not excepting Martha; though she took care to inform me that
+her father could have allowed her ten times as much if he had
+chosen. No, dear; I don’t know what poverty means; but I
+should like to understand my own position very precisely, now
+that I am a woman, don’t you know? I am quite aware that
+you are an heiress; everybody at South Hill has taken pains to
+impress that fact upon my mind. Please, dear, what am I?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Darling, papa is not a rich man, but he——’ Madoline
+paled a little as she spoke, knowing that South Hill had been
+settled on her mother, and her mother’s children after her, and
+that, in all probability, Sir Vernon had hardly any other property
+in the world. ‘He will provide for you, no doubt. And
+if he were unable to leave you much by-and-by, I have plenty
+for both.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I understand,’ said Daphne, growing pale in her turn; ‘I
+am a pauper.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’</p>
+
+<p>‘My mother had not a sixpence, I suppose; and that is why
+nobody ever speaks of her; and that is why there is not a portrait
+of her in this house, where she lived, and was admired, and
+loved. I was wrong to call Dibb vulgar for measuring all things
+by a money standard. It is other people’s measure, as well as
+hers.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, how can you say such things?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Didn’t I tell you that I say everything that comes into my
+head? Oh, Madoline, don’t for pity’s sake think that I envy
+you your wealth—you who have been so good to me, you who
+are all I have to love in this world! It is not the money I care
+for. I think I would just as soon be poor as rich, if I could be
+free to roam the world, like a man. But to live in a great house,
+waited on by an army of servants, and to know that I am nobody,
+of no account, a mere waif, the penniless daughter of a
+penniless mother—that wounds me to the quick.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, my pet, what a false, foolish notion! Do you
+think anybody in this house values you less because I have a
+fortune tied to me by all manner of parchment deeds, and you
+have no particular settlement, and have only expectations from
+a not over-rich father? Do you think you are not admired for
+your grace and pretty looks, and that by-and-by there will not
+come the best substitute which modern life can give for the
+prince of our dear old fairy tales—a good husband, who will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</span>
+be wealthy enough to give my darling all she can desire in this
+world?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure I shall hate him, whoever he may be,’ said Daphne,
+with a short, impatient sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline looked at her earnestly, with the tender motherly
+look which came naturally to the beautiful face when the elder
+sister looked at the younger. She had put aside her crewel-work
+at the beginning of this conversation, and had given all her
+attention to Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why do you say that, dearest?’ she asked gravely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I don’t know, really. But I’m sure I shall never
+marry.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t it rather early to make up your mind on that point?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should it be? Hasn’t one a mind and a heart at seventeen
+as well as at seven-and-twenty? I should like well enough
+to have a very rich husband by-and-by, so that, instead of being
+Daphne, the pauper, I might be Mrs. Somebody, with ever so
+much a year settled upon me for ever and ever. But I don’t
+believe I shall ever see anybody I shall be able to care for.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope, darling, you haven’t taken it into your foolish head
+that you care for some one already. School-girls are so silly.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And generally fall in love with the dancing-master,’ said
+Daphne, with a laugh. ‘I think I tried rather hard to do that,
+but I couldn’t succeed. The poor man wore a wig; a dreadfully
+natural, dreadfully curly wig; like the pictures of Lord Byron.
+No, Lina; I pledge you my word that no dancing-master’s image
+occupies my breast.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad to hear it,’ answered Madoline. ‘I hope there is
+no one else.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne blushed rosy red. She took a gardenia from the low
+glass vase on her sister’s work-table, where the white waxen
+flowers were clustered in the centre of a circle of purple pansies,
+and began to pick the petals off slowly, one by one.</p>
+
+<p>‘He loves me—loves me not,’ she whispered softly, smiling
+all the while at her own foolishness, till the smile faded slowly
+at sight of the barren stem.</p>
+
+<p>‘Loves me not,’ she sighed. ‘You see, Fate is against me,
+Lina. I am doomed to die unmarried.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, do you mean that there is someone?’ faltered
+Madoline, more in earnest than it might seem needful to be
+with a creature so utterly childlike.</p>
+
+<p>‘There was a man once in a wood,’ said Daphne, with crimson
+cheeks and downcast eyelids, yet with an arch smile curling
+her lips all the while. ‘There was a man whom Dibb—I beg
+your pardon, Martha—and I once met in a wood in our holidays—papa
+would have me spend my holidays at school, you see—and
+I have thought since, sometimes—mere idle fancy, no doubt—that
+he is the only man I should ever care to marry; and that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</span>
+is impossible, for he is engaged to someone else. So you see I
+am fated to die a spinster.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, what do you mean? A man whom you met in a
+wood, and he was engaged—and——! You don’t mean that
+you and your friend Miss Dibb made the acquaintance of a strange
+man whom you met when you were out walking,’ exclaimed
+Madoline, aghast at the idea. ‘Surely you were too well looked
+after for that! You never went out walking alone, did you? I
+thought Frenchwomen were so extremely particular.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course they are,’ replied Daphne, laughing. ‘I was only
+drawing on my imagination, dearest, just to see that solemn face
+of yours. It was worth the trouble. No, Lina dear, there is no
+one. My heart is as free as my shuttlecock, when I send it flying
+over the roof scaring the swallows. And now, let us talk
+about your dear self. I want you to tell me all about Mr. Goring;
+about Gerald. I suppose I may call him by his christian name,
+as he is to be my brother-in-law by-and-by.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your brother, dear.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you, Lina. That sounds ever so much nicer. I am
+so short of relations. Then I shall always call him Gerald.
+What a pretty name!’</p>
+
+<p>‘He was called after his mother, Lady Geraldine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I see. She represented the patrician half of his family, and
+his father the plebeian half, I believe? The father was a Dibb,
+was he not—a money-grubber?’</p>
+
+<p>‘His father was a very worthy man, who rose from the ranks,
+and made his fortune as a contractor.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And Lady Geraldine married him for the sake of his worthiness;
+and you and Gerald are going to spend his money.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Goring and his wife were a very united couple, I believe,
+Daphne. There is no reason why you should laugh at
+them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Except my natural malice, which makes me inclined to ridicule
+good people. You should have said that, Madoline; for
+you look as if you meant it. Was the contractor’s name always
+Goring?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; he was originally a Mr. Giles, but he changed his name
+soon after his marriage, and took the name of his wife’s maternal
+grandfather, a Warwickshire squire.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What a clever way of hooking himself on to the landed
+gentry!’ said Daphne. ‘And now, please tell me all about
+Gerald. Is he very nice?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You may suppose that I think him so,’ answered Madoline,
+going on with the fashioning of a water-lily on a ground of soft
+gray cloth. ‘I can hardly trust myself to praise him, for fear I
+should say too much.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How is it that I have seen no photograph of him? I expected
+to see half-a-dozen portraits of him in this room alone;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</span>
+but I suppose you have an album crammed with his photos somewhere
+under lock and key.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He has not been photographed since he was a school-boy.
+He detests photography; and though he has often promised me
+that he would sacrifice his own feelings so far as to be photographed,
+he has never kept his word.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is very bad of him,’ said Daphne. ‘I am bursting with
+curiosity about his looks. But—perhaps,’ she faltered, with a
+deprecating air, ‘the poor thing is rather plain, and that is why
+he does not care to be photographed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ replied Madoline, with her gentle smile; ‘I do not think
+his worst enemy could call him plain—not that I should love
+him less if he were the plainest of mankind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, you would,’ exclaimed Daphne, with conviction. ‘It
+is all very well to talk about loving a man for his mind, or his
+heart, and all that kind of thing. You wouldn’t love a man with
+a potato-nose or a pimply complexion, if he were morally the
+most perfect creature in the universe. I am very glad my future
+brother is handsome.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is a matter of opinion—I don’t know your idea of a
+handsome man.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me see,’ paid Daphne, clasping her bands above her head,
+in a charmingly listless attitude, and giving herself up to thought.
+‘My idea of good looks in a man? The subject requires deliberation.
+What do you say to a pale complexion, inclining to sallowness;
+dreamy eyes, under dark straight brows; forehead low,
+yet broad enough to give room for plenty of brains; mouth
+grave, and even mournful in expression, except when he smiles—the
+whole face must light up like a god’s when he smiles; hair
+darkest brown, short, straight, silky?’</p>
+
+<p>‘One would think you had seen Mr. Goring, and were describing
+him,’ said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘What, Lina, is he like that?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is so difficult to realise a description, but really yours
+might do for Gerald. Yet, I daresay, the image in your mind is
+totally different from that in mine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No doubt,’ answered Daphne, and then, with a half-breathed
+sigh, she quoted her favourite Tennyson. ‘No two dreams are
+alike.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will be able to judge for yourself before long,’ said
+Madoline; ‘Gerald is coming home in the autumn.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The autumn!’ cried Daphne. ‘That is an age to wait.
+And then, I suppose, you are to be married immediately?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not till next spring, That is my father’s wish. You see, I
+don’t come of age till I’m twenty-five, and there are settlements
+and technical difficulties. Papa thought it best for us to wait,
+and I did not wish to oppose him.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I believe it is all my father’s selfishness. He can’t bear to
+lose you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can I be angry with him for that?’ asked Madoline, smiling
+tenderly at the thought of her father’s love. ‘I am proud to
+think that I am necessary to his happiness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But there is your happiness—and Mr. Goring’s—to be considered.
+It has been such a long engagement, and you have
+been kept so much apart. It must have been a dreary time for
+you. If ever I am engaged I hope my young man will always be
+dancing attendance upon me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My father thought it best that we should not be too much
+together, for fear we should get tired of each other,’ said Madoline,
+with an incredulous smile; ‘and as Gerald is very fond of
+travelling, and wanted change after the shock of his mother’s
+death, papa proposed that he should spend the greater part of
+his life abroad until my twenty-fifth birthday. The separation
+would be a test for us both, my father thought.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A most cruel, unjustifiable test,’ cried Daphne indignantly.
+‘Your twenty-fifth birthday, forsooth! Why, you will be an
+old woman before you are married. In all the novels I ever
+read, the heroine married before she was twenty, and even then
+she seemed sometimes quite an old thing. Eighteen is the
+proper age for orange-blossoms and a Brussels veil.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is all a matter of opinion, pet. I don’t think young
+lady novelists of seventeen and eighteen have always the wisest
+views of life. You must not say a word against your father,
+Daphne. He always acts for the best.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I never heard of a domestic tyrant yet of whom that could
+not be said,’ retorted Daphne. ‘However, darling, if you are
+satisfied, I am content; and I shall look forward impatiently to
+the autumn, and to the pleasure of making my new brother’s
+acquaintance. I hope he will like me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No fear of that, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not at all sure of winning his regard. Look at my
+father! I would give a great deal to be loved by him, yet he
+detests me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne! How can you say such a thing?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is the truth. Why should I not say it? Do you suppose
+I don’t know the signs or aversion as well as the signs of love?
+I know that you love me. You have no need to tell me so. I
+do not even want the evidence of your kind acts. I am assured
+of your love. I can see it in your face; I can hear it in every
+tone of your voice. And I know just as well that my father
+dislikes me. He kept me at a distance as long as ever he could,
+and now that duty—or his regard for other people’s opinion—obliges
+him to have me at home, he avoids me as if I were a
+roaring lion, or something equally unpleasant.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only be patient, dear. You will win his heart in time,’ said<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</span>
+Madoline soothingly. She had put aside the water-lily, and had
+drawn her sister’s fair head upon her shoulder with caressing
+fondness. ‘He cannot fail to love my sweet Daphne when he
+knows her better,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know that. I fancy he was prejudiced against me
+when I was a little thing and could scarcely have offended him;
+unless it were by cutting my teeth disgustingly, or having nettlerash,
+or something of that kind. Lina, do you think he hated
+my mother?’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline started, and flushed crimson.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne! what a question! Why, my father’s second marriage
+was a love-match, like his first.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I suppose he was in love with her, or he would hardly
+have married a nobody,’ said Daphne, in a musing tone; ‘but
+he might have got to hate her afterwards.’</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the door was opened, and a voice, full, round,
+manly in tone, said: ‘Madoline, I want you.’</p>
+
+<p>Lina rose hastily, letting her work fall out of her lap, kissed
+Daphne, and hurried from the room at her father’s summons.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘THOU LOVEST ME, THAT WOT I WEL CERTAIN.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Many</span> a time since her home-coming had Daphne been on the
+point of telling her sister all about that more or less anonymous
+traveller, whom she called the man in the wood; but her picnicking
+adventures, looked at retrospectively from the strictly-correct
+atmosphere of home, seemed much more terrible than
+they had appeared to her at Asnières; where a vague hankering
+after forbidden pleasures was an element in the girlish mind, and
+where there was a current idea that the most appalling impropriety
+was allowable, provided the whole business were meant
+as a joke. But Daphne, seated at Madoline’s feet, began to feel
+doubtful if there were any excuse for such joking; and, after
+that one skirmishing approach to the subject, she said no more
+about the gentleman who had called himself Nero. It was hateful
+to her to have a secret, were it the veriest trifle, from her
+sister; but the idea of Madoline’s disapproval was still more
+repugnant to her; and she was very certain that Madoline would
+disapprove of the whole transaction in which Mr. Nero had been
+concerned.</p>
+
+<p>‘I could never tell her how thoroughly at home I felt with
+him,’ mused Daphne; ‘how easy and natural our acquaintance
+seemed—just as if we had been destined from the very beginning
+of time to meet at that hour and at that spot. And to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</span>
+part so soon!’ added Daphne with a sigh. ‘It seemed hardly
+worth while to meet.’</p>
+
+<p>Yes; it was a mystery upon which Daphne brooded very
+often in the fair spring weather, as she wandered by her beloved
+river. Strange that two lives should meet and touch for a
+moment, like circles on yonder placid water—meet, and touch,
+and part, and never meet again!</p>
+
+<p>‘The rings on the river break when they touch,’ thought
+Daphne. ‘They are fatal to each other. Our meeting had no
+significance: two summer days and it was all over and ended.
+I wonder whether Nero ever thought of Poppæa after he left
+Fontainebleau? Poppæa! What a silly name; and what a
+simpleton he must have thought me for assuming it.’</p>
+
+<p>Of all things at South Hill, where there was so much that
+was beautiful, Daphne loved the river. It had been her delight
+when she was a tiny child, hardly able to syllable the words that
+were meant to express admiration. She had wanted to walk into
+the water—had struggled in her nurse’s arms to get at it, and
+make herself a part of the thing that seemed so beautiful. Then
+when she was just a little older and a little wiser, it had been
+her delight to sit on the very edge of the stream, to sit hidden in
+the rushes, spelling out a fairy tale. In those early days she
+would have been happy if the world had begun and ended in
+those low-lying meadows where daffodils, and orchises, and blue-bells
+grew in such rich abundance that she could gather and
+waste them all day long, yet make no perceptible difference in
+their number; where the lazy cattle stood half the day breast-high
+in the weedy water, dreaming with wide open eyes; where
+the shadow of a bird flitting across the stream was the only thing
+that gave token of life’s restlessness. Later there came a happy
+midsummer holiday when her father was away at Ems, nursing
+his last fancied disorder, and she and Madoline were alone
+together at South Hill under the protection of the maiden aunt,
+who never interfered with anybody’s pleasure so long as she
+could enjoy her own way of life; and in a willow-shaded creek
+Daphne found a disused forgotten punt which had lain stagnant
+in the mud for the last seven years, and with the aid of a youth
+who worked in the gardens she had so patched and caulked
+and painted this derelict as to make it tolerably water-tight, and
+in this frail and clumsy craft she had punted herself up and
+down a shallow tributary of the deep swift Avon, as far afield
+as she could go without making Madoline absolutely miserable.</p>
+
+<p>And now being ‘finished,’ and a young woman, Daphne
+asked herself where she was to get a boat. She had plenty of
+pocket-money. There was an old boat-house under one of the
+willows where she could keep her skiff. She had learnt to swim
+at Asnières, so there could be no danger. So she took counsel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</span>
+with the garden youth, who had grown into a man by this time,
+and asked him whether he could buy her a boat, and where.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s accordin’ to the kind o’ boat as you might fancy,
+miss,’ answered her friend. ‘There’s a many kind o’ boats, you
+see.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I hardly know; but I should like something light and
+pretty, a long, narrow boat, don’t you know?’ and Daphne went
+on to describe an outrigger.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lord, miss, it would be fearful dangerous. You’d be getting
+he among the weeds, and upsettin’ un. You’d better have a
+dingey. That’s safe and comfortable like.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A dingey’s a thing like a washing-tub, isn’t it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Rayther that shape, miss.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I wouldn’t sit in such a thing for the world. No, Bink, if I
+can’t have a long, narrow boat with a sharp nose, I’ll have a
+punt. I think I should really like a punt. I was so fond of
+that one. I feel quite sorry that the rats ate it. Yes; you
+must buy me a punt. There’ll be plenty of room in it for my
+drawing-board, and my books, and my crewel-work; for I mean
+to live on the river when the summer comes. How soon can you
+buy me my punt?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think as how you’d better have a dingey, miss,’ said Bink.
+‘It was all very well pushing about a punt in the creeks when
+you was a child, but a punt don’t do in deep water. You can
+have a nice-shaped dingey, not too much of a tub, you know, and
+a pair o’ sculls, and I’ll teach you to row. I can order it any
+arternoon that I can get an ’oliday, miss. There’s a good boat-builder
+at Stratford. I’ll order he to build it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How lovely,’ cried Daphne, clapping her hands. ‘A boat
+built on purpose for me! It must have no end of cushions, for
+my sister will come with me very often, of course. And it must
+be painted in the early English style. I’ll have a dark red dado.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A what, miss?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A dado, Bink. The lower half of the inside must be painted
+dark red, and the upper half a lovely cream colour; and the outside
+must be a dark greenish-brown. You understand, don’t
+you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not over well, miss. You’d better write it down for the
+boat-builder.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll do better than that, Bink—I’ll make a sketch of the
+boat, and paint it the colours I want. And it—she—must have
+a name, I suppose.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Boats has names mostly, miss.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My boat shall not be nameless. I’ll call her——’ A pause,
+then a sudden dimpling smile and a bright blush, loveliness
+thrown away on Bink, who stood at ease leaning on his hoe and
+staring at the river. ‘I’ll call her—Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>‘An ’ero, miss. What ’ero? The old Dook o’ Wellington?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</span>
+He were an ’ero, warn’t he? Or Nelson? That’s more of a
+name for a boat.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nero, Bink, Nero. I’ll write it down for the boat-builder.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’d better, please, miss. I never was good at remembering
+names.’</p>
+
+<p>When Daphne had given Bink the sketch, with full authority
+to commission her boat, she had an after-thought about her
+father. The boat-house was his property; even the river in
+some measure belonged to him; he had at least riparian rights.
+So after dinner that evening, when Madoline and she were sitting
+opposite each other in silence at the pretty table, bright
+with velvety gloxinias and maidenhair ferns, while Sir Vernon
+leant back in his chair, sipping his claret, and grumbling vaguely
+about things in general, the indolence of his servants, the unfitness
+of his horses, the impending ruin of the land in which he
+lived, and the crass ignorance of the pig-headed body of men who
+were pretending to govern it, Daphne, in a pause of the paternal
+monologue, lifted up her voice.</p>
+
+<p>‘Papa, may I have a dingey, please? I can buy it with my
+own money.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A dingey!’ exclaimed Sir Vernon. ‘What in Heaven’s
+name is a dingey?’</p>
+
+<p>He had an idea that it must be some article of female attire
+or of fancy-work, since his frivolous young daughter desired to
+possess it.</p>
+
+<p>‘A dingey—is—a kind of boat, papa.’</p>
+
+<p>‘On, a dingey!’ exclaimed Sir Vernon, as if she had said
+something else in the first instance. ‘What can you want with
+a dingey?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so dearly fond of the river, papa; and a dingey is such
+a safe boat, Bink says.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is Bink?’</p>
+
+<p>‘One of the under gardeners.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A curious authority to quote. So you want a dingey, and to
+row yourself about the river like a boy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There is no one to notice me, papa.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The place is secluded enough, so long as you don’t go beyond
+our own meadows. I desired Madame Tolmache to have you
+taught swimming. Can you swim?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, papa. I believe I am a rather good swimmer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, you can have your boat—it is a horribly masculine
+taste—always provided you do not go beyond our own fields. I
+cannot have you boating over half the county.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be quite happy to keep to our own fields, papa,’
+Daphne answered meekly.</p>
+
+<p>She enlisted the devoted Bink in her service next morning;
+he patched up the old boat-house, and whitewashed the inside
+walls; much to the displeasure of Mr. MacCloskie, the head gardener,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</span>
+a gentleman in broadcloth and a top-hat, who seemed to
+do little more than walk about the grounds, smoke his pipe in
+the hot-houses, plan expensive improvements, and order costly
+novelties from the most famous nurseries at home and abroad.
+Bink ought to have been wheeling manure from the stable during
+that very afternoon which he had devoted to the repair of
+the boat-house; and Mr. MacCloskie declared that the future
+well-being of his melon-bed was imperilled by the young man’s
+misconduct.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall complain to Sir Vernon,’ said MacCloskie.</p>
+
+<p>‘I beg your pardon, Mr. MacCloskie, but Miss Daphne told
+me to do it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Daphne, indeed! I can’t have my gardeners interfered
+with by Miss Daphne,’ exclaimed MacCloskie; as much as to say
+that his master’s second daughter was a person of very small
+account.</p>
+
+<p>He gave Daphne a lecture that evening, in very broad
+Scotch, when he met her in the rose-garden.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll be meddling with my roses next, miss, I suppose,’ he
+said severely. ‘You young ladies from boarding-school have
+no respect for anything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your roses!’ cried Daphne, with a contemptuous glance at
+the closely-pruned twigs of the standards, which at this early
+period looked as if they would never flower again. ‘When I
+see any I shall know how to appreciate them. Roses, indeed!
+I wonder you like to mention them. Everything flowers a
+month earlier in France than you can make it do here. I had
+a finer Gloire de Dijon nodding in at my window at Asnières
+this time last year than you ever saw in your life’; and she
+marched off, leaving MacCloskie with a dim idea that in any
+skirmish with this young lady he was likely to be worsted.</p>
+
+<p>How ardently she had longed for home a few weeks ago,
+when she was counting the days that must pass before the appointed
+date of her return, under the wing of Madame Tolmache,
+who crossed the Channel reluctantly once or twice a
+year to escort pupils, and was prostrate in the cabin throughout
+the brief sea-passage, leaving the pupils to take care of themselves,
+and so horribly ill on landing that the pupils had to take
+care of her. So long as South Hill was in the future Daphne
+had believed that perfect happiness awaited her there—gladness
+without a flaw—but now that she was at home, established, a
+recognised member of the family for all her life to come, she
+began to discover that even at South Hill life was not perfect
+happiness. She was devotedly fond of Madoline, and Madoline
+was full of affection—careful, anxious, almost maternal love—for
+her. There was no flaw in her gladness here. But every
+hour she spent in her father’s company made her more certain
+of the one painful fact that he did not care for her. There was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</span>
+even in her mind the terrible suspicion that he actually disliked
+her; that he would have been glad to have her out of his way—married,
+dead and buried—anything so that she might be removed
+from his path.</p>
+
+<p>She was very young, and her spirits had all the buoyancy of
+youth that has never been acquainted with sordid cares. So
+there was plenty of gladness in her life. It was only now and
+then that the thought of her father’s indifference, or possible
+dislike, drifted like a passing cloud across her mind, and took
+the charm out of everything.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a lovely place it is!’ she said to Madoline, one evening
+after dinner, when they were strolling about the lawn, where
+three of the finest deodaras in the county rose like green towers
+against the warm western sky; ‘I am fonder of it every day,
+yet I can’t help feeling that I’m an interloper.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne! You—the daughter of the house!’</p>
+
+<p>‘A daughter; not the daughter,’ answered Daphne. ‘Sometimes
+I fancy that I am a daughter too many. You should have
+heard how MacCloskie talked to me yesterday because I had
+taken Bink from his work for an hour or two. If I had been a
+poor little underpaid nursery governess he couldn’t have scolded
+me more severely. And I think servants have a knack of finding
+out their master’s feelings. If I had been a favourite with
+my father, MacCloskie would never have talked like that. A
+favourite! What nonsense! It is so obvious that I bore him
+awfully.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, if you are going to nurse this kind of fancy you
+will never be happy,’ Madoline said earnestly, winding her arm
+round her sister, as they sauntered slowly down the sloping lawn,
+side by side. ‘You must make every allowance for papa; he is
+not a demonstrative man. His manner may seem cold, perhaps—’</p>
+
+<p>‘Cold!’ cried Daphne; ‘it is ice. I feel I have entered the
+frigid zone directly I go into his presence. But he is not cold
+to you; he has love enough, and to spare, for you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We have been so much together. I have learned to be useful
+to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; you have spent your life with him, while I have been
+an outcast and an alien.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, you have no right to speak like that. My father
+is a man of peculiar temper. It pleased him to have only one
+daughter at home till both were grown up. You were more
+lively than I—younger by seven years—and he fancied you
+would be noisy. He is a nervous man, wanting an atmosphere
+of complete repose. And now you are grown up, and have
+come home for good; and I really cannot see any reason why
+you should complain.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; there is nothing to complain about,’ cried Daphne<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</span>
+bitterly, ‘only that I have been cheated out of a father’s love.
+Not by you, Lina dearest; no, not by you,’ she exclaimed, when
+her sister would have spoken. ‘I am not base enough to be
+jealous of you; you who have been my good angel always. No,
+dear; but he has cheated me. My father has cheated me in
+not giving me a chance of getting at his heart when I was a
+child. What is the good of my trying now? I come home to
+him as a stranger. How can he be expected to care for me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If he does not love you now, my pet—and mind, I don’t
+admit that it is so—he will soon learn to be fond of you. He
+can’t help admiring my sweet young sister,’ said Madoline, with
+tearful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘I will never plague you about him any more, dear,’ protested
+Daphne, with a penitent air. ‘I will try to be satisfied
+with your affection. You do love me, don’t you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘With all my strength.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And to do my duty in that state of life, etc., etc., etc.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Talking of duty, Daphne, I have been wanting to make a
+suggestion for the last week or two,’ said Madoline gently.
+‘Don’t you think it would be better for you if you were to
+employ yourself a little more?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Employ myself!’ cried Daphne. ‘Why, I have been tremendously
+busy for the last three days—about the dingey.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, you are laughing at me. I mean that at seventeen—’</p>
+
+<p>‘And a half,’ interjected Daphne, with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>‘At seventeen your education can hardly be completed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know ridiculously little, though I have been outrageously
+crammed. I’m afraid all the sciences and languages and literature
+have got mixed up in my brain, somehow,’ said Daphne;
+‘but I am awfully fond of poetry. I know a good deal of
+Tennyson by heart. I could repeat every line of “The Lotos
+Eaters,” if you asked me,’ said Daphne, blushing unaccountably.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think you ought to read, dear,’ pursued Madoline gravely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, so I do. Didn’t I read three volumes of “Sair for
+Somebody,” in a single day, in order that the book might go
+back to Mudie’s?’</p>
+
+<p>‘That rubbishing story! Daphne dear, you know I am talking
+of serious reading.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you had better find somebody else to talk to,’ said
+Daphne. ‘I never could pin my mind to a dull book; my
+thoughts go dancing off like butterflies, skimming away like
+swallows. I could no more plod through a history, or a volume
+of “Voyages in Timbuctoo,” or “Sir Somebody’s Memoirs at
+the Court of Queen Joan of Naples,” or “A Waiting-woman’s
+Recollections of Peter the Great,” than I could fly. There are
+a few characters in history I like to read about—in short instalments.
+Napoleon the Great, for instance. There is a hero<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</span>
+for you—bloodthirsty, but nice. Mary Stuart, Julius Cæsar,
+Sir Walter Raleigh, Columbus, Shakespeare. These shine out
+like stars. But the dull dead level of history—the going out of
+the Whigs and the coming in of the Tories, the everlasting
+battles in the Netherlands or the Punjaub! I envy you your
+faculty of taking interest in such dry-as-dust stuff, but I cannot
+imitate you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I like to be able to talk to papa—and to Gerald, by-and-by,’
+said Madoline shyly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Does papa talk of the Punjaub?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not often, dear; but in order to understand the events of
+one’s own day, it is necessary to know the history of the past.
+Papa likes to discuss public affairs, and I generally read the
+<cite>Times</cite> to him every morning, as you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ answered Daphne; ‘I know you are his slave.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, it is my delight to be useful to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; that is the sort of woman you are, always sacrificing
+your own happiness for other people. But I love you for it,
+dearest,’ exclaimed Daphne, with one of her sudden gushes of
+affection. ‘Only don’t ask me to improve myself, darling, now
+that I am tasting perfect liberty for the first time in my life.
+Think how I have been ground and polished and governessed
+and preached at, and back-boarded,’ drawing up her slim figure
+straight as an arrow, ‘and dumb-belled, and fifth-positioned, for
+so many weary years of my life, and let me have my fling of
+idleness at home. I began to wonder if I really had a home,
+my father kept me away from it so long. Let me be idle and
+happy, Lina, for a little while; I shall mend by-and-by.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My pet, do you suppose I don’t wish you to be happy? But
+I don’t want your education to come to a full stop, because you
+have left school.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me learn to be like you, if I can. There could be no
+higher education than that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Flatterer!’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Lina, no one can flatter perfection.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline stopped her with a kiss, blushing at her praise.
+And then they turned and walked slowly back to the house,
+across the dewy lawn, where the shadows of the deodaras had
+deepened and lengthened with the rising of the moon. Daphne
+paused on the terrace to look back at the low-lying river gleaming
+between its willowy banks—so beautiful and ghostly a thing
+in the moonlight that it almost seemed as if it belonged to
+another world.</p>
+
+<p>‘How lovely it is out of doors!’ sighed Daphne. ‘Doesn’t
+it seem foolishness to shut oneself up in a house? Stay a little
+longer, Lina.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Papa would not like to be deserted, dear. And Aunt Rhoda
+talked about coming in this evening.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Then I am in for a lecture,’ said Daphne. ‘Aunt Rhoda
+told me to go and see her, and I haven’t been.’</p>
+
+<p>There was a brilliant light in the billiard-room, and the two
+girls went in through the conservatory and down the marble
+steps to the room where they were most likely to find their
+father at this time of the evening. Sir Vernon Lawford was
+not an enthusiastic billiard-player; indeed, he was not enthusiastic
+about anything, except his own merits, of which he had a very
+exalted opinion. He played a game of billiards every evening,
+because it kept him awake and kept him in gentle movement,
+which state of being he considered good for his health. He
+played gravely, as if he were doing his duty to society, and
+played well; and though he liked to have his elder daughter in
+the room while he played, and could bring himself to tolerate
+the presence of other people, he resented anything distracting in
+the way of conversation.</p>
+
+<p>Seen in the bright white light of the carcel lamps, Sir Vernon
+Lawford, at fifty-three years of age, was still a handsome man—a
+tall, well set up man, with a hard, clearly chiselled face, eyes
+of lightish gray, cold and severe in expression, gray hair and
+whiskers, hands of feminine delicacy in shape and colour, and
+something rigid and soldierlike in his bearing, as of a man who
+had been severely drilled himself, and would be a martinet in
+his rule over others.</p>
+
+<p>He was bending over the table with frowning brow, meditating
+a difficult stroke, as the two girls came softly in through the
+wide doorway—two tall slim figures in white gowns, with a background
+of flowers and palms showing dimly behind them, and
+beyond the foliage and flowers, the glimmer of a marble balustrade.</p>
+
+<p>A fashionably-dressed lady of uncertain age, the solitary
+spectator of the game, sat fanning herself in silence by the wide
+marble fire-place.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon’s antagonist came quietly forward to greet Madoline
+and her sister.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so glad you have come in,’ he said confidentially. ‘I
+am getting ignominiously licked. I had a good mind to throw
+up the sponge and bolt out into the garden after you just now;
+only I thought if I didn’t take my licking decently, Sir Vernon
+would never play with me again. Isn’t it too delicious out there
+among the deodaras?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Heavenly,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘and the river looks like
+the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">chemin du Paradis</i>. I wonder you can stay in this glaring
+room.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon had made up his mind by this time, and with a
+slow and gentle stroke, made a cannon and sent his adversary’s
+ball into a pocket.</p>
+
+<p>‘Just like my luck,’ said the adversary, while Sir Vernon again
+deliberated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</span></p>
+
+<p>He was a man of about seven-and-twenty, tall, broad-shouldered,
+good-looking, with something of a gladiatorial air in his
+billiard-room undress. He was fair, with a healthy Saxon colour,
+and Saxon blue eyes; features not chiselled, but somewhat
+heavily moulded, yet straight and regular withal; hair, a lightish
+brown, cropped closely to a well-shaped head; forehead, fairly
+furnished with intellectual organs, but not the brow of poet or
+philosopher, wit or savant: a good average English forehead, a
+good average English face, beaming with good-nature, as he
+stands by Madoline’s side, chalking his cue as industriously as if
+chalk could win the game.</p>
+
+<p>This was Edgar Turchill, of Hawksyard Grange, Sir Vernon
+Lawford’s most influential and pleasantest neighbour, a country
+squire of old family and fair fortune, owner of one of the most
+interesting places in the county, a real Warwickshire manor-house,
+and the only son of his widowed mother.</p>
+
+<p>The lady by the fire-place now began to think she had been
+neglected long enough, and beckoned Daphne with her fan.
+She beckoned the girl with an authoritative air which distinctly
+indicated relationship.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come here and sit by me, child,’ she whispered, tapping the
+fender-stool with the point of her embroidered shoe, whereupon
+Daphne meekly crouched at the lady’s feet, prepared for the
+worst. ‘Why have you never been to the Rectory?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne twisted her fingers in and out of her slender watch-chain
+with an embarrassed air.</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed, I hardly know why, Aunt Rhoda,’ she faltered; ‘perhaps
+it was because I was enjoying myself so much. Everything
+at home was so new to me, you see—the gardens, the river, the
+meadows.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You were enjoying yourself so much that you had no inclination
+to see your aunt and uncle?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Uncle?’ echoed Daphne. ‘Oh, you mean the Rector?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course. Is he not your uncle?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is he, aunt? I know he’s your husband; but as you only
+married him a year ago, and he hadn’t begun to be my uncle
+when I was last at home, it never occurred to me——’</p>
+
+<p>‘That by my marriage with him he had become your uncle.
+That looks like ignorance, Daphne, or want of proper feeling,’
+said the Rector’s wife with an offended air.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was ignorance, Aunt Rhoda. At Madame Tolmache’s
+they taught us so much geography and geology and astronomy,
+don’t you know, that they were obliged to keep us in the dark
+about uncles and aunts. And am I really to call the Rector,
+uncle? It seems quite awful.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why awful?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I have looked up to him all my life as a being in a
+black silk gown who preached long sermons and would do something<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</span>
+awful to me if I laughed in church. I looked upon him
+as the very embodiment of the Church, don’t you know, and
+should hardly have believed that he wanted breakfast and dinner,
+and wore out his clothes and boots like other men. When
+he came to call I used to run away and hide myself. I had an
+idea that he would scold me if I came in his way—take me to
+task for not being a christian, or ask me to repeat last Sunday’s
+Gospel. And to think that he should be my uncle. How curiously
+things come round in this life!’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you will not cease to respect him, and that you will
+learn to love him,’ said Aunt Rhoda severely.</p>
+
+<p>‘Learn to love him! Do you think he would like it?’ asked
+Daphne doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>‘He would like you to behave to him as a niece ought,
+Daphne. Marmaduke considers my relations his own.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m sure it is very good of him,’ said Daphne, ‘but I should
+think it must come a little difficult after having known us so long
+in quite another capacity.’</p>
+
+<p>The Rector’s wife gave her niece a look of half interrogation,
+half disapproval. She did not know how much malice might
+lurk under the girl’s seeming innocence. She and Daphne had
+never got on very well together in the old days, when Miss Lawford
+was the mistress of South Hill, and the arbiter of her nieces’
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>A year ago, and Rhoda Lawford, at three-and-forty, was still
+Rhoda Lawford; and any idea of matrimonial promotion which
+she had once cherished might fairly be supposed to have expired
+in the cold shade of a neighbourhood where there were very few
+marriageable men. But Rhoda had begun life as a girl with
+considerable pretensions. She had never asserted herself or been
+put forward by her friends as a beauty. The material for that
+kind of reputation was wanting. But she had been admired
+and praised for her style, her manner, her complexion, her hair,
+her hands, her feet, her waist, her shoulders. She was a young
+lady with good points, and had been admired for her points.
+People had talked of her as the elegant Miss Lawford: and as,
+happily, elegance is a quality which time need not impair, Rhoda
+had gone on being elegant for five-and-twenty years. The waist
+and shoulders, the hands and feet, had never been out of training
+for a quarter of a century. More ephemeral charms had
+bloomed and faded; and many a fair friend of Rhoda’s who had
+triumphed in the insolence of conscious beauty was now a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">passée</i>
+matron, of whom her acquaintance said pityingly, ‘You have no
+idea how pretty that woman was fifteen years ago;’ but the elegant
+Miss Lawford’s attractions were unimpaired, and the elegant
+Miss Lawford had not yet surrendered the hope of winning
+a prize in the matrimonial lottery.</p>
+
+<p>The living of Baddesley-with-Arden was one of those fat<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</span>
+sinecures which are usually given to men of good family and
+considerable private means. The Reverend Marmaduke Ferrers
+was the descendant of a race well rooted in the soil, and
+had, by the demise of two bachelor uncles and three maiden
+aunts, accumulated to himself a handsome property, in land,
+and houses, and the safer kind of public securities. These legacies
+had fallen in at longish intervals, some of the aunts being
+slow in relaxing their grip upon this world’s gear; but had all
+the wealth of a Westminster or a Rothschild been poured into
+the Reverend Marmaduke’s lap, he would not have renounced
+the great tithes of Baddesley-with-Arden, or the important,
+and, in a manner, judicial and dictatorial position which he held
+as Rector of those two small parishes. Mr. Ferrers loved the
+exercise of authority on a small scale. He had an autocratic
+mind, but it was a very small mind, and it suited him to be the
+autocrat of two insignificant pastoral villages, rather than to
+measure his power against the men of cities. To hector Giles
+for getting drunk on a Saturday night, to lecture Joan for her
+absence from church on Sunday, afforded the Rector as much
+delight as a bigger man might have felt in towering over the riot
+of a Republican chamber or proroguing a Rump parliament.
+Mr. Ferrers had been Rector of Baddesley thirty years, and in
+all that time he had never once thought of taking to himself a
+wife. He had a lovely old Rectory and a lovelier garden; he
+had the best servants in the neighbourhood—partly because he
+was a most exacting master, and partly because he paid his housekeeper
+largely, and made her responsible for everybody else.
+The whole machinery of his life worked with a delightful smoothness.
+He had nothing to gain from matrimony in the way of
+domestic comfort; and there is always the possibility of loss.
+Thus it happened that although he had gone on admiring Miss
+Lawford for a round dozen years, talking of her as a most ladylike
+and remarkably well-informed person, pouring all his small
+grievances into her ear, confiding to her the most recondite
+details of any little complaint from which he happened to suffer,
+consulting her about his garden, his stable, his parish, it had
+never occurred to him that he should improve his condition or
+increase his happiness by making the lady his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, throughout this time, Rhoda Lawford had always had
+it in her mind that if all other views failed, she could wind up
+fairly well by marrying the Rector. It was not at all the kind
+of fate she had imagined for herself years ago in the freshness
+of her charms; but it would be a respectable match. Nobody
+could presume to pity her, or say that she had done badly. The
+Rector was ten years her senior, so nobody could laugh at her
+for marrying a youth. Altogether there would be a fitness and a
+propriety about the alliance, which would be in perfect harmony
+with the elegance of her person and the spotlessness of her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</span>
+character. On her fortieth birthday, Miss Lawford told herself
+that the time had now come when the Rector must be taken
+seriously in hand, and taught to see what was good for himself.
+A friendship which had been meandering on for the last twelve
+years must be brought to a head; dangling attention and old-fashioned
+compliments must be reduced into something more
+tangible. In a word, the Rector must be converted from a
+friend into a suitor.</p>
+
+<p>It had taken Miss Lawford two years to open the Reverend
+Marmaduke’s eyes; but at the end of those two years the thing
+was done, and the Rector was sighing, somewhat apoplectically,
+for the approach of his wedding-day, and the privilege of claiming
+Rhoda for his own. The whole process had been carried
+out with such consummate tact that Marmaduke Ferrers had not
+the faintest suspicion that the matrimonial card which he had
+drawn had been forced upon him. He believed in his engagement
+as the spontaneous growth of his own mind. ‘Strange
+that I should have known you so long, my Rhoda, and only discovered
+lately that you were so dear to me,’ he murmured in
+his fat voice, as he dawdled with his betrothed in one of those
+shadowy Warwickshire lanes which seem made for the meandering
+of lovers. His Rhoda smiled tenderly; and then they began to
+talk about the new carpet for the Rectory drawing-room, the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Sèvres garniture de cheminée</i> which Sir Vernon had given his
+sister for a wedding present, dwelling rather upon the objective
+than the subjective side of their position, as middle-aged lovers
+are apt to do.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you will not mind my keeping Todd,’ said the Rector
+presently, pausing to recover his breath, and plucking a dog-rose
+in absence of mind.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, have I any wish in opposition to yours?’ murmured
+Rhoda, but not without a shadow of sourness in the droop of
+her lips, for she had a shrewd idea that so long as the Rector’s
+housekeeper, Mrs. Todd, remained at the Rectory, nobody else
+could be mistress there.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘LOVE MAKETH ALL TO GONE MISWAY.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Aunt Rhoda</span> was not a person to be set at defiance, even by
+Daphne, who was by no means a tractable spirit. She had said,
+‘Come to the Rectory,’ and had said it with such an air of
+offended dignity that Daphne felt she must obey, and promptly,
+lest a worse lecture should befall her. So directly after luncheon
+on the following day she changed her gown, and prepared herself
+for the distasteful visit. Madoline was going to drive to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</span>
+Warwick with her father, so Daphne would have to perform her
+penance alone.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely afternoon in the first week of May, the air
+balmy and summer-like, the meadows looking their greenest
+before the golden glory of buttercup time. Yonder in the reedy
+hollows the first of the marsh marigolds were opening their
+yellow cups, and smiling up at the yellow sun. The walk to
+Arden Rectory was something over a mile, and it was as lovely
+a walk as any one need care to take; through meadows, beside
+flowery hedgerows, with the river flowing near, but almost hidden
+by a thick screen of willows; and then by one of the most
+delightful lanes in the county, a green arcade of old elms, with
+here a spreading oak, and there a mountain ash, to give variety
+to the foliage.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne set out alone, as soon as she had seen the carriage
+drive away from the door; but she was not destined to go her
+way unaccompanied. Half way down the avenue she met Mr.
+Turchill, strolling at a lazy pace, a cigar in his mouth, and a red
+setter of Irish pedigree at his heels.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of Daphne he threw away his cigar, and took his
+hands out of his pockets.</p>
+
+<p>‘I was coming up to the Hill to ask somebody to play a game
+of billiards, and everybody seems going out,’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>They had known him so long in an easy-going neighbourly
+way that he almost took rank as a relation. Daphne, who had
+spent so much of her life away from home, had naturally seen
+less of him than anybody else; but as she had been a child during
+the greater part of their acquaintance, he had fallen into the
+way of treating her as an elder brother might have done; and he
+had not yet become impressed with the dignity of her advancing
+years. For him she was still the Daphne he had romped with in
+the Christmas holidays, and whose very small pony it had been
+his particular care to get broken.</p>
+
+<p>‘I met Madoline and Sir Vernon going to Warwick. Why
+go to Warwick? What is there for anyone but a Cook’s
+tourist to do in Warwick? But I thought you would be at
+home. You haven’t a bad notion of billiards, and you might
+have helped a fellow to while away an afternoon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are like the idle boy in the spelling-book story, wanting
+someone to play with you,’ said Daphne, laughing at him.
+He had turned, and was walking beside her, the docile setter
+following meekly, like a dog who felt that he was of no consequence
+in the world now that the days of sport were done.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, the hunting’s all over, don’t you know, and there’s
+no more shooting, and I never cared much for fishing, and I’ve
+got such a confoundedly clever bailiff that he won’t let me open
+my mouth on the farm. So the days do hang rather heavy on
+a fellow’s hands.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Why don’t you take to Alpine climbing?’ suggested Daphne.
+‘I don’t mean Mont Blanc—everybody does that—but the
+Matterhorn, or Monte Rosa, or something. If I were a young
+man I should amuse myself in that way.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t set an exaggerated value on my life, but when I
+do make up my mind to throw it away, I think I’ll do the thing
+more comfortably,’ replied Edgar Turchill. ‘Don’t trouble
+yourself to suggest employment for me. I’m not complaining
+of my life. There’s a good deal of loafing in it, but I rather like
+loafing, especially when I can loaf in pleasant company. Where
+are you going, and may I go with you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am going on a duty visit to Aunt Rhoda and my new
+uncle. Isn’t it rather dreadful to have an uncle thrust upon
+one in that way?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well,’ returned Edgar deliberately, ‘I must say if I had the
+choosing of my relations I should leave out the Rector. But
+you needn’t mind him. Practically he’s no more to you than
+he was before he married your aunt.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know,’ said Daphne doubtfully. ‘He may take
+liberties. He was always a lecturing old thing, and he’ll lecture
+ever so much more now that he’s a relation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But you needn’t stand his lecturing. Just tell him quietly
+that you don’t hold with clerical interference in the affairs of
+the laity.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He got me ready for my confirmation, and that gave him a
+kind of hold over me,’ said Daphne. ‘You see, he found out
+the depth of my ignorance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll wager he’d be ploughed in a divinity exam, to-morrow,’
+said Edgar. ‘These old heathens of village parsons got their
+degrees in a day when the dons were a set of sleepy-headed old
+duffers like themselves. But don’t let’s talk about him. What
+is Madoline going to do in Warwick?’</p>
+
+<p>‘She and my father are going to make some calls in the
+neighbourhood, and I believe she has a little shopping to do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why didn’t you go with them?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Papa does not like to have three people in the barouche.
+Besides, I had promised to call on my aunt. She talked to me
+quite awfully last night about my want of proper feeling in
+never having visited her in her new house.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why didn’t you wait till she asked you to dinner? They
+give capital dinners at the Rectory, but their feeds are few and
+far between. I don’t want to say anything rude about your
+aunt, but she strikes me as a lady who has too keen an appreciation
+of the value of money to fritter it away upon other
+people.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why don’t you say at once that she’s horribly stingy?’ said
+the outspoken Daphne. ‘I don’t think she ever spent sixpence,
+except upon her own clothes, all the time she lived in my father’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</span>
+house, and I know she was always getting gowns and bonnets
+out of Madoline. I’ve seen her do it. But please don’t let’s
+talk of her any more. It’s rather worse than talking of him. I
+shall have to kiss her, and call her dear aunt presently, and I
+shall detest myself for being such a hypocrite.’</p>
+
+<p>They had gone out by the lodge-gate by this time, the
+lodge with its thatched roof and dormer window, like a big eye
+looking out under a shaggy pent-house eyebrow; the lodge
+by which there grew one of those tall deodaras which were the
+chief glory of the grounds at South Hill. They crossed the
+high road, and entered the meadow-path which led towards
+Arden Rectory; and the setter finding himself at large in
+a field, frisked about a little as if with a faint suspicion of
+partridges.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, by-the-by,’ began Daphne, in quite a new tone, ‘now
+that we are alone, I want you to tell me all about Lina’s engagement.
+Is he nice?’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar Turchill’s face clouded over so darkly that the look
+seemed a sufficient answer to her question.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I see,’ she said. ‘You don’t like him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t say that. He’s an old acquaintance—a friend—a
+kind of family connection even, for his mother’s grandmother
+was a Turchill. But to be candid, I don’t like the engagement.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why not, unless you know something against him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know nothing against him. He is a gentleman. He is
+ten times cleverer than I, ten times richer, a great deal handsomer—my
+superior in every way. I should be a mean cad if
+I couldn’t acknowledge as much as that. But——’</p>
+
+<p>‘You think Lina ought to have accepted him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think the match in every way suitable, natural, inevitable.
+How could he help falling in love with her? Why should she
+refuse him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are talking in riddles,’ said Daphne. ‘You say it is a
+suitable match, and a minute ago you said you did not like the
+engagement.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I say so still. Can’t you imagine a reason for my feelings?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne contemplated him thoughtfully for a few moments
+as they walked on. His frank English face looked graver than
+she ever remembered to have seen it—grave to mournfulness.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am very sorry,’ she faltered. ‘I see. You are fond of
+her yourself. I am desperately sorry. I should have liked you
+ever so much better for a brother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say that till you have seen Gerald. He has wonderful
+powers of fascination. He paints and poetises, and all that
+kind of thing, don’t you know; the sort of thing that pleases
+women. He can’t ride a little bit—no seat—no hands.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How dreadful!’ cried Daphne, aghast. ‘Does he tumble
+off?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t mean that. He can stick in his saddle somehow;
+and he hunts when he’s at home in the season; but he can’t
+ride.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh,’ said Daphne, as if she were trying to understand this
+distinction.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, Daphne. I don’t mind your knowing it—now it’s
+all over and done with,’ pursued Edgar, glad to pour his griefs
+into a friendly ear. ‘You’re my old playfellow—almost like a
+little sister—and I don’t think you’ll laugh at me, will you,
+dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Laugh at you!’ cried Daphne. ‘If I do may I never be able
+to smile again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I asked your sister to marry me. I had gone on loving her
+for I don’t know how long, before I could pluck up courage to
+ask the question, I was so afraid of being refused. And I
+knew if she would only say “Yes,” that my mother would be
+the proudest woman in the county, for she positively adores
+Madoline. And I knew Lina liked Hawksyard; and that was
+encouraging. So one day, about four years ago, I got desperate,
+and asked the plain question in a plain way. Heaven knows
+how much of my happiness hung on the answer; but I couldn’t
+have screwed any poetry out of myself to save my life. I could
+only tell her the honest truth—that I loved her as well as man
+ever loved woman.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well?’ asked Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was no use. She said “No,” so kindly, so sweetly, so
+affectionately—for she really likes me, you know, in a sisterly
+way—that she made me cry like a child. Yes, Daphne, I made
+a miserable ass of myself. She must have despised such unmanly
+weakness. And then in a few minutes it was all over.
+All my hopes were extinguished like a candle blown out by the
+wind, and all my future life was dark. And I had to go back
+and tell the poor mother that the daughter she wanted was
+never to come to Hawksyard.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so sorry for you,’ faltered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you, dear. I knew you would be sympathetic. The
+blow was a crusher, I assure you. I went away for a few
+months deer-stalking in the Highlands; but lying on a mountain
+side in a gray mist for hours on end, not daring to move an
+eyelash, gives a fellow too much time for thought. I was
+always thinking of Madoline, and my thoughts were just two
+hundred and fifty miles due south of the stag when he came
+across, so I generally shot wild, and felt myself altogether a
+failure. Then I tried a month in Normandy and Brittany with
+a knapsack, thinking I might walk down my trouble. But I
+found that tramping from one badly-drained town to another
+badly-drained town—all infected with garlic—and looking at
+churches I didn’t particularly want to see, was a sham kind of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</span>
+consolation for a very real disappointment; so I made up my
+mind to come back to Hawksyard and live it down. And I
+have lived it down,’ concluded Edgar exultantly.</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t care for Madoline any longer?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not care for her! I shall worship her as long as I have
+breath in my body. But I have resigned myself to the idea
+that somebody else is going to marry her—that the most I can
+ever be to her is a good, useful, humdrum kind of friend, who
+will be godfather to one of her boys by-and-by; ready to ride
+helter-skelter for the doctor if any of her children show symptoms
+of measles or whooping-cough; glad to take dummy of an
+evening when she and her husband want to play whist; or to
+entertain the boys at Hawksyard for their summer holidays
+while she and he are enjoying a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> ramble in the Engadine.
+That is the sort of man I shall be.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How good you are!’ said Daphne, slipping her hand through
+his arm with an affectionate impulse.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, my little Daphne, it will be your turn to full in love
+some of these days; put it off as long as you can, dear, for
+there’s more pain than pleasure in it at best.’ Daphne gave an
+involuntary sigh. ‘And then I hope you’ll confide in me just
+as freely as I have confided in you. I may be useful as an
+adviser, you know, having had my own troubles.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You could only advise me to be patient, and give up all
+hope,’ said Daphne, drawing her hand from his arm. ‘What
+would be the good of such advice? But I shall never trouble
+you. I am not going to fall in love—ever.’</p>
+
+<p>She gave the last word an almost angry emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor little Daphne! as if you could know anything about
+it,’ exclaimed Edgar, smiling incredulously at her. ‘That kind
+of thing comes upon one unawares. You talk as if you could
+choose whether you would fall in love or not—like Hercules
+between his two roads, deliberating whether he should go to
+the right or the left. Ah, my dear, when we come to that stage
+of our journey there is but one road for us: and whether it
+lead to the Garden of Eden or the Slough of Despond, we must
+travel over it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are getting poetical,’ exclaimed Daphne scornfully; ‘I
+didn’t know that was in your line. But please tell me about
+Gerald. I have never seen him, you know. He was always at
+Oxford, or roaming about the world somewhere, when I was at
+home for the holidays. I have been at home so little, you see,’
+she interjected with a piteous air. ‘I used to hear a great deal
+about a very wonderful personage, enormously rich, fabulously
+clever, and accomplished, and handsome; and I grew rather to
+hate him, as one is apt to hate such perfection; and then one
+day I got a letter from Lina—a letter brimming over with
+happiness—to say that she and this demigod were engaged to be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</span>
+married, but it was to be a long engagement, because the other
+demigod—my father—wished for delay. So you see I know
+very little about my future brother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are sure to like him,’ said Edgar with a somewhat
+regretful air. ‘He has all the qualities which please women.
+Another man might be as handsome, or even handsomer, yet
+not half so sure of winning a woman’s love. There is something
+languid, lackadaisical—poetical, I suppose Madoline
+would call it—in his appearance and manner which women
+admire.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope he is not effeminate,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I hate a
+womanish man.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I don’t think anyone could call him effeminate; but
+he is dreamy, bookish, fond of lolling about under trees, smoking
+cigarettes and reading verses.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m certain I shall detest him,’ said Daphne with conviction,
+‘and it will be very dreadful, since I must pretend to like
+him for Lina’s sake. You must stand by me, Edgar, when he
+is at the Hill. You and I can chum together, and leave the
+lovers to spoon by themselves. Oh, by-the-by, of course you
+haven’t lived on the Avon all your life without being able to
+row a boat?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I can row pretty well.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you must teach me, please. I am going to have a
+boat, my very own. It is being built for me. You’ll teach me
+to row, won’t you, Edgar?’ she asked with a pleading smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be delighted.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks tremendously. That will be ever so much better
+than learning of Bink.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed! And who is Bink?’ asked Edgar, somewhat
+dashed.</p>
+
+<p>‘One of the under gardeners. Such an honest creature, and
+devoted to me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I see: and your first idea was to have been taught by
+Bink?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If there had been no one else,’ she admitted apologetically.
+‘You see, having ordered a boat, it is essential that I should
+learn to row.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Naturally.’</p>
+
+<p>They had arrived at the last field by this time. The village
+lay before them in the sunlight: an old gray church in an old
+churchyard on the edge of the river, a cluster of half-timbered
+cottages, with walls of wattle and dab, a homestead dwarfed by
+rick-yard and barns, and finally the Rectory, a low, many-gabled
+house, half-timbered, like the cottages, a regular sixteenth-century
+house, with clustered chimneys of massive ruddy-brown
+brickwork, finished by a stone coping, in which the
+martens had built from time immemorial.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you with me,’ said
+Daphne as they came near the stile. ‘It will take the edge off
+my visit.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but I did not mean to go in with you. I only walked
+with you for the pleasure of being your escort.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nonsense; you are going in, and you are going to stay
+till I go home, and you are going back with me to dinner. I’m
+sure you must owe Aunt Rhoda a call. Just consider now if
+you don’t.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, who had a guilty memory of being a guest at one
+of the Rector’s rare but admirable dinners, just five weeks ago,
+blushed as he admitted his indebtedness.</p>
+
+<p>‘I certainly haven’t called since I dined there,’ he said;
+‘but the fact is, I don’t get on very fast with your aunt,
+although I’ve known her so long.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not. I never knew any one who could get on
+with her, except Lina, and she’s an angel.’</p>
+
+<p>They came to the stile, which was what the country people
+call a tumble-down stile, all the timbers of the gate sliding down
+with a clatter when a handle is moved, and leaving space for
+the pedestrian to step over. The Rectory gate stood before
+them, a low wide gate, standing open to admit the entrance of a
+carriage. The garden was lovely, even before the season of
+bedding-out plants and carpet horticulture. For the last twenty
+years the Rector had annually imported a choice selection of
+Dutch bulbs, whereby his flower-beds and borders on this May
+afternoon were a blaze of colour—tulip, hyacinth, ranunculus,
+polyanthus—each and every flower that blooms in the sweet
+youth of the year; and as a background for the level lawn with
+its many flower-beds, there was a belt of such timber and an
+inner circle of such shrubs as are only to be found in a garden
+that has been cultivated and improved for a century or so.
+Copper beeches, Spanish chestnuts, curious specimens of the oak
+tribe, the feathery foliage of acacia and mountain ash, the pink
+bloom of the wild plum, and the snowy clusters of the American
+crab, deodara, cypress, yew, and in the foreground arbutus and
+seringa, lilac, laburnum, guelder rose, with all the family of
+laurel, laurustinus, and bay; a shrubbery so exquisitely kept,
+that not a blighted branch or withered leaf was to be seen in
+the spacious circle which fenced and protected that smiling
+lawn from all the outer world.</p>
+
+<p>The house was, in its way, as perfect as the garden. There
+were many rooms, but none large or lofty. The Rectory had
+all the shortcomings and all the fascinations of an old house:
+wide hearths and dog-stoves, high mantelpieces, deep-recessed
+casements, diamond panes, leaden lattices, massive roughly-hewn
+beams supporting the ceilings, a wide shallow staircase,
+rooms opening one out of another, irregular levels, dark oak<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</span>
+floors, a little stained glass here and there—real old glass, of
+rich dark red, or sombre green, or deep dull topaz.</p>
+
+<p>The house was delightfully furnished, though Mr. Ferrers
+had never taken any trouble about it. Many a collector, worn
+out before his time by the fever and anxiety of long summer
+afternoons at Christie’s, would have envied Marmaduke Ferrers
+the treasures which had fallen to him without the trouble of
+collecting. Residuary legatee to all his aunts and uncles, he had
+taken to himself the things that were worth having among
+their goods and chattels, and had sold all the rubbish.</p>
+
+<p>The aunts and uncles had been old-fashioned non-locomotive
+people, hoarding up and garnering the furniture of past
+generations. Thus had the Rector acquired Chippendale chairs
+and tables, old Dutch tulip-wood cabinets and bureaus, Louis
+Quinze commodes, Elizabethan clocks, Derby and Worcester,
+Bow, Bristol, Leeds, and Swansea crockery, with a sprinkling
+of those dubious jugs and bowls that are generally fathered on
+Lowestoft. Past generations had amassed and hoarded in order
+that the Rector might be rich in art treasures without ever
+putting his hand in his pocket. Furniture that had cost a few
+pounds when it was bought was now worth hundreds, and the
+Rector had it all for nothing, just because he came of a selfish
+celibate race. The Chippendale furniture, the Dutch marqueterie
+work, old china, and old plate had all been in Miss
+Lawford’s mind when she took the Rector in hand and brought
+him to see her fitness for his wife.</p>
+
+<p>True that her home at South Hill was as elegant, and in all
+things as desirable; but there was a wide difference between
+living under the roof of her brother, more or less on sufferance,
+and being mistress of her own house. Thus the humbler
+charms of the Rectory impressed her more than the dignity of
+the Hill. Sir Vernon Lawford was not a pleasant man to whom
+to be beholden. His daughters were now grown up. Madoline
+was sovereign mistress of the house which must one day be her
+own; and Rhoda Lawford felt that to stay at the Hill would
+be to sink to the humdrum position of a maiden aunt, for whom
+nobody cared very much.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers was sitting in a Japanese chair on the lawn, in
+front of the drawing-room windows, nursing a black and white
+Japanese pug, and rather yearning for someone from the outer
+world, even in that earthy paradise where the guelder roses
+were all in bloom and the air was heavy with the odour of
+hawthorn-blossom.</p>
+
+<p>‘At last!’ she exclaimed, as Daphne and her companion
+made their timorous advance across the velvet turf, mown twice
+a week in the growing season. ‘You too, Mr. Turchill; I
+thought you were never coming to see me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘After that delightful evening with the Mowbrays and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</span>
+people from Liddington! It was too ungrateful of me,’ said
+Edgar. ‘If you call me Mr. Turchill I shall think I am never
+to be forgiven.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, then, it shall be Edgar, as it was in the old days,’
+said Mrs. Ferrers, with a faint suspicion of sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>There had been a time when it had seemed to her not altogether
+impossible that she should become Mrs. Turchill.
+Hawksyard Grange was such a delicious old place; and Edgar
+was her junior by only fourteen years.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t want you to make ceremonious calls just because
+you happen to have dined here; but I want you to drop in
+often because you like us. I want you to bring me breathings
+of the outside world. The life of a clergyman’s wife in a country
+parish is so narrow. I feel hourly becoming a vegetable.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers looked complacently down at her tea-gown of
+soft creamy Indian silk, copiously trimmed with softer Breton
+lace, and felt that at least she was a very well-dressed vegetable.
+Knots of palest blue satin nestled here and there among the
+lace; a cluster of hot-house roses—large velvety yellow roses—reposed
+on Mrs. Ferrers’s shoulder, and agreeably contrasted
+with her dark, smoothly-banded hair. She prided herself on
+the classic form of her small head, and the classic simplicity of
+her coiffure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think we all belong, more or less, to the vegetable tribe
+about here,’ said Mr. Turchill. ‘There is something sleepy in
+the very air of our pastoral valleys. I sometimes long to get
+away to the stone-wall country yonder, on the Cotswolds, to
+breathe a freer, more wakeful air.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t say that I languish for the Cotswolds,’ replied Mrs.
+Ferrers, ‘but I should very much like a fortnight in Mayfair.
+Do you know if your father and Madoline are going to London
+this season, Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think not. Papa fancies himself not quite well enough
+for the fatigue of London, and Lina does not care about going.’</p>
+
+<p>It had been Sir Vernon’s habit to take a furnished house at
+the West End for part of May and June, in order to see all the
+picture-galleries, and hear all the operas that were worth being
+heard, and to do a little visiting among his very select circle of
+acquaintance. He was not a man who made new acquaintances
+if he could help it, or who went to people because they lived in
+big houses and gave big dinners. He was exclusive to a fault,
+detested crowds, and had a rooted conviction that every new
+man was a swindler, who was destined to end his career in
+ignominious bankruptcy. It had gone hard with him to consent
+to his daughter’s engagement with a man who on the father’s
+side was a parvenu; but he had consoled himself as best he
+might with the idea of Lady Geraldine’s blue blood, and Mr.
+Goring’s very substantial fortune.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘And so you are no longer a school-girl, Daphne, and have
+come home for good,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, dropping her elegant
+society manner and putting on a sententious air, which Daphne
+knew too well. ‘I hope you are going to try to improve yourself—for
+what girls learn at school is a mere smattering—and
+that you are aware how much room there is for improvement—in
+your carriage, for instance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I haven’t any carriage, aunt, but papa is going to let me
+keep a boat,’ said Daphne, who had been absently watching the
+little yellow butterflies skimming above the flame-coloured tulips.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear, I am talking of your deportment. You are sitting
+most awkwardly at this moment, one shoulder at least
+three inches higher than the other.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t worry about it, aunt,’ said Daphne indifferently;
+‘perhaps it’s a natural deformity.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope not. I think it rests with yourself to become a very
+decent figure,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, straightening her own slim
+waist. ‘Here comes your uncle, returning from his round of
+duty in time to enjoy his afternoon tea.’</p>
+
+<p>The Rector drove up to the gate in a low park-phaeton,
+drawn by a sleek bay cob; a cob too well fed and lazy to think
+of running away, but a little apt to become what the groom
+called ‘a bit above himself,’ and to prance and toss his head in
+an arrogant manner, or even to shy at a stray rabbit, as if he
+had never seen such a creature before, and hadn’t the least idea
+what the apparition meant. The Rector’s round of duty had
+been a quiet drive through elm-shadowed lanes, and rustic
+occupation roads, with an occasional pull-up before the door of
+a cottage, or a farm-house, where, without alighting, he would
+inquire in a fat pompous voice after the welfare, spiritual and
+temporal, of his parishioners, and then shedding on them the
+light of a benignant smile, or a few solemn words of clerical
+patronage, he would give the reins a gentle shake and drive off
+again. This kind of parochial visitation, lasting for about two
+hours, the Rector performed twice or three times a week, always
+selecting a fine afternoon. It kept him in the fresh air, gave
+him an appetite for his dinner, and maintained pleasant relations
+between the pastor and his flock.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ferrers flung the reins to his groom, a man of middle
+age, in sober dark livery, and got himself ponderously out of
+his carriage on to the gravel drive. He was a large man, tall
+and broad, with a high bald head, red-brown eyes of the protuberant
+order, a florid complexion, pendulous cheeks and chin,
+and mutton-chop whiskers of a warm chestnut. He was a man
+whose appearance, even to the stranger, suggested a life devoted
+to dining; a man to whom dinner was the one abiding reality
+of life, the same yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow—a memory,
+an actuality, a hope. He was the man for whom asparagus and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</span>
+peas are forced into untimely perfection—the man who eats
+poached salmon in January, and gives a fabulous price for the
+first of the grouse—the man for whom green geese are roasted
+in June, and who requires immature turkeys to be fatted for
+him in October; who can enjoy oysters at fourpence a piece;
+who thinks ninety shillings a dozen a reasonable price for dry
+champagne, and would drive thirty miles to secure a few dozen
+of the late Colonel Somebody’s famous East India sherry.</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda had married the Reverend Marmaduke with her eyes
+fully opened to the materialistic side of his character. She
+knew that if she wanted to live happily with him and to
+exercise that gentle and imperceptible sway, which vulgar
+people call hen-pecking, she must make dinner the chief study
+of her life. So long as she gave full satisfaction upon this
+point; so long as she could maintain a table, in which the
+homely English virtue of substantial abundance was combined
+with the artistic variety of French cooking; so long as she
+anticipated the Rector’s fancies, and forestalled the seasons,
+she would be sure to please. But an hour’s forgetfulness of his
+tastes or prejudices, a single failure, an experimental dish, would
+shatter for the time being the whole fabric of domestic bliss,
+and weaken her hold of the matrimonial sceptre. The Rector’s
+wife had considered all this before she took upon herself the
+responsibilities of married life. Supremely indifferent herself
+to the pleasures of the table, she had to devote one thoughtful
+hour of every day to the consideration of what her husband
+would like to eat, drink, and avoid. She had to project her
+mind into the future to secure for him novelty of diet. Todd,
+the housekeeper, had ministered to him for many years, and
+knew all his tastes: but Mrs. Ferrers wanted to do better than
+Todd had done, and to prove to the Rector that he had acted
+wisely in committing himself to the dulcet bondage of matrimony.
+She was a clever woman—not bookish or highly cultured—but
+skilled in all the small arts and devices of daily life; and
+so far she had succeeded admirably. The Rector, granted the
+supreme indulgence of all his desires, was his wife’s admiring
+slave. He flattered her, he deferred to her, he praised her,
+he boasted of her to all his acquaintance as the most perfect
+thing in wives, just as he boasted of the sleek bay as the
+paragon of cobs, and his garden as the archetype of gardens.</p>
+
+<p>And now for the first time Daphne had to salute this great
+man in his new character of an uncle. She went up to him
+timidly; a graceful, gracious figure in a pale yellow batiste
+gown, a knot of straw-coloured Marguerites shining on her
+breast, her lovely liquid eyes darkened by the shadow of her
+Tuscan hat.</p>
+
+<p>‘How do you do, uncle?’ she said, holding out a slender
+hand, in a long loose Swedish glove.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Rector started, and stared at her dumbly, whether
+bewildered by so fair a vision, or taken aback by the unexpected
+assertion of kinsmanship, only he himself knew.</p>
+
+<p>‘Bless my soul!’ he cried. ‘Is this Daphne? Why the
+child has grown out of all knowledge. How d’ye do, my dear?
+Very glad to see you. You’ll stop to dinner, of course. You
+and Turchill. How d’ye do, Turchill?’</p>
+
+<p>The Rector had a troublesome trick of asking everybody
+who crossed his threshold in the afternoon to dinner. He had
+an abiding idea that his friends wanted to be fed; that they
+would rather dine with him than go home; and that if they
+refused, their refusal was mere modesty and self-denial, and
+ought not to be accepted. Vainly had Rhoda lectured her
+spouse upon this evil habit, vainly had she tried to demonstrate
+to him that an afternoon visit should be received as such, and
+need not degenerate into a dinner-party. The Rector was
+incorrigible. Hospitality was his redeeming virtue.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks awfully,’ replied Daphne; ‘but I must go home
+to dinner. Papa and Lina expect me. Of course Mr. Turchill
+can do as he likes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then Turchill will stay,’ said the Rector.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Rector, you are very kind, but I must go home
+with Daphne. I brought her, don’t you see, and I’m bound to
+take her back. There might be a bull, or something.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think I am afraid of bulls?’ cried Daphne; ‘why
+I love the whole cow tribe. If I saw a bull in one of our
+meadows, I should walk up to him and make friends.’</p>
+
+<p>The Rector surveyed the yellow damsel with an unctuous
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘It would be dangerous,’ he said in his fat voice, ‘if I were
+the bull.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should be tempted to imitate an animal famous in classic
+story, and swim the Avon with you on my back,’ replied the
+Rector.</p>
+
+<p>‘Duke,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, with her blandest smile, ‘don’t
+you think you had better rest yourself in your cool study while
+we take our tea? I’m sure you must be tired after your long
+drive. These first warm days are so exhausting. I’ll bring you
+your cup of tea.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t trouble yourself, my love,’ replied the Rector;
+‘Daphne can wait upon me. Her legs are younger than yours.’</p>
+
+<p>This unflattering comparison, to say nothing of the vulgar
+allusion to ‘legs,’ was too much for Rhoda’s carefully educated
+temper. She gave her Marmaduke a glance of undisguised displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not so ancient or infirm as to find my duties irksome,’
+she said severely; ‘I shall certainly bring you your tea.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Rector had a weakness about pretty girls. There was
+no harm in it. He had lived all his life in an atmosphere of
+beauty, and no scandal had ever arisen about peeress or peasant.
+He happened to possess an artistic appreciation of female loveliness,
+and he took no trouble to disguise the fact. Youth and
+beauty and freshness were to him as the very wine of life—second
+only to actual Cliquot, or Roederer, Clos Vougeot, or
+Marcobrünner. His wife was too well acquainted with this
+weakness. She had known it years before she had secured
+Marmaduke for her own; and she had flattered herself that she
+could cure him of this inclination to philander; but so far the
+curative process had been a failure.</p>
+
+<p>But Marmaduke, though inclined to folly, was not rebellious.
+He loved a gentle doze in the cool shade of his study, where
+there were old-fashioned easy-chairs of a shape more comfortable
+than has ever revealed itself to the mind of modern upholsterer.
+The brief slumber gave him strength to support the fatigue of
+dressing for dinner, for the Reverend Marmaduke was as careful
+of the outward man as of the inner, and had never been seen in
+slovenly attire, or with unshaven visage.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers sank into her chair with a sigh of relief as the
+Rector disappeared through the deep rustic porch. The irreproachable
+butler, who had grown gray in Mr. Ferrers’s service,
+brought the tea-tray, with its Japanese cups and saucers. Edgar
+Turchill subsided upon a low rustic stool at Daphne’s feet, just
+where his length of arm would enable him to wait upon the two
+ladies. They made a pretty domestic group: the westering sun
+shining upon them, the Japanese pug fawning at their feet,
+flowers and foliage surrounding them, birds singing, bees humming,
+cattle lowing in the neighbouring fields.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar looked up admiringly at the bright young face above
+him: eyes so darkly luminous, a complexion of lilies and roses,
+that exquisite creamy whiteness which goes with pale auburn
+hair, that lovely varying bloom which seems a beauty of the
+mind rather than of the person, so subtly does it indicate every
+emotion and follow the phases of thought. Yes; the face was
+full of charm, though it was not the face of his dreams—not the
+face he had worshipped for years before he presumed to reveal
+his love for the owner. If a man cannot win the woman he
+loves it were better surely that he should teach himself to love
+one who seems more easily attainable. The bright particular
+star shines afar off in an inaccessible heaven; but lovely humanity
+is here at his side, smiling on him, ready to be wooed
+and won.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar’s reflections did not go quite so far as this, but he felt
+that he was spending his afternoon pleasantly, and he looked
+forward with complacency to the homeward walk through the
+meadows.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘HIS HERTE BATHED IN A BATH OF BLISSE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Daphne’s</span> boat came home from the builder’s at the end of
+three weeks of longing and expectation, a light wherry-shaped
+boat, not the tub-like sea-going dingey, but a neat little craft
+which would have done no discredit to a Thames waterman.
+Daphne was in raptures; Mr. Turchill was impressed into her
+service, in nowise reluctant; and all the mornings of that happy
+June were devoted to the art of rowing a pair of sculls on the
+rapid Avon. Never had the river been in better condition;
+there was plenty of water, but there had been no heavy rains
+since April, and the river had not overflowed its natural limits;
+the stream ran smoothly between its green and willowy banks,
+just such a lenient tide as Horace loved to sing.</p>
+
+<p>When Daphne took up a new thing it was a passion with
+her. She was at the exuberant age when all fresh fancies are
+fevers. She had had her fever for water-colours, for battledore
+and shuttlecock, for crewel-work. She had risen at daybreak to
+pursue each new delight: but this fancy for the boat was the
+most intense of all her fevers, for the love of the river was a love
+dating from infancy, and she had never been able to gratify it
+thoroughly until now. Every evening in the billiard-room she
+addressed the same prayer to Edgar Turchill, when she bade him
+good-night: ‘Come as early as you can to-morrow morning,
+please.’ And to do her pleasure the Squire of Hawksyard rose
+at cockcrow and rode six miles in the dewy morning, so as to be
+at the boat-house in Sir Vernon’s meadow before Arden church
+clock struck seven.</p>
+
+<p>Let him be there as early as he might Daphne was always
+waiting for him, fresh as the morning, in her dark blue linen
+gown and sailor hat, the sleeves tucked up to the elbow to give
+free play to her supple wrists, her arms lily-white in spite of
+wind and weather.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s much too good of you,’ said she, in her careless way, not
+ungrateful, but with the air of a girl who thinks men were
+created to wait upon her. ‘How very early you must have
+been up!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not so much earlier than you. It is only an hour’s ride
+from Hawksyard, even when I take it gently.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you have had no breakfast, I daresay.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have had nothing since the tumbler of St. Galmier you
+poured out for me in the billiard-room last night.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor—dear—soul!’ sighed Daphne, with a pause after each
+word. ‘How quite too shocking! We most institute a gipsy
+tea-kettle. This kind of thing shall not occur again.’</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with her loveliest smile, as much as to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</span>
+say: ‘I have made you my slave, but I mean your bondage to
+be pleasant.’</p>
+
+<p>When he came to the boat-house next morning he found a
+kettle singing gaily on a rakish-looking gipsy-stove, a table laid
+for breakfast inside the boat-house, a smoking dish of eggs and
+bacon, and the faithful Bink doing butler, rough and rustic, but
+devoted.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder whether she has read Don Juan?’ thought Edgar.
+The water, the gipsy breakfast, the sweet face smiling at him,
+reminded him of an episode in that poem. ‘Were I shipwrecked
+to-morrow I would not wish to awaken in a fairer paradise,’ he
+said to himself, while Bink adjusted a camp-stool for him,
+breathing his hardest all the time. ‘This is a delicious surprise,’
+he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>‘The eggs and bacon?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; the privilege of a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> breakfast with you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Tête-à-fiddlestick; Bink is my chaperon. If you are impertinent
+I will ask Mr. MacCloskie to join us to-morrow morning.
+Sugar? Yes, of course, sugar and cream. Aren’t the
+eggs and bacon nice? I cooked them. It was Bink’s suggestion.
+I was going to confine myself to rolls and strawberry
+jam; but the eggs and bacon are more fun, aren’t they? You
+should have heard how they frizzled and sputtered in the frying-pan.
+I had no idea bacon was so noisy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your first lesson in cookery,’ said Edgar. ‘We shall hear
+of you graduating at South Kensington.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My first lesson, indeed! Why, I fried pancakes over a
+spirit-lamp ever so many times at Asnières; and I don’t know
+which smelt nastiest, the pancakes or the lamp. Our dormitory
+got into awful disgrace about it.’</p>
+
+<p>She had seated herself on her camp-stool and was drinking
+tea, while she watched Edgar eat the eggs and bacon with an
+artistic interest in the process.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is the bacon done?’ she asked. ‘Did I frizzle it long
+enough?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s simply delicious; I never ate such a breakfast.’</p>
+
+<p>It was indeed a meal in fairyland. The soft clear morning
+light, the fresh yet balmy atmosphere, the sunlit river and
+shadowy boat-house, all things about and around lent their
+enchantment to the scene. Edgar forgot that he had ever cared
+for anyone in the world except this girl, with the soft gray eyes
+and sunny hair, and all too captivating smile. To be with her,
+to watch her, to enjoy her girlishness and bright vivacity, to
+minister to her amusement and wait upon her fancies—what
+better use could a young man, free to take his pleasure where
+he liked, find for his life? And far away in the future, in the
+remoteness of years to come, Edgar Turchill saw this lovely being,
+tamed and sobered and subdued into the pattern of his ideal<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</span>
+wife, losing no charm that made her girlhood lovely, but gaining
+the holier graces of womanhood and wifehood. To-day she
+was little more than a child, seeking her pleasure as a child does,
+draining the cup of each new joy like a child; and he knew that
+he was no more to her than the agreeable companion of her
+pleasures. But such an association, such girlish friendship so
+freely given, must surely ripen into a warmer feeling. His
+pulses could not be so deeply stirred and hers give no responsive
+throb. There must be some sympathy, some answering
+emotion in a nature so intensely sensitive.</p>
+
+<p>Cheered by such hopeful reflections, Mr. Turchill ate an
+excellent breakfast, while Daphne somewhat timorously tried
+an egg, and was agreeably surprised to find it tasted pretty
+much the same as if the cook had fried it; a little leathery,
+perhaps, but that was a detail.</p>
+
+<p>‘I feel so relieved,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised
+if I had turned them into chickens. And now, if you
+have quite finished we’ll begin our rowing. I have a conviction
+that if I don’t learn to feather properly to-day I shall
+never accomplish it while I live.’</p>
+
+<p>The boat was ready for them, moored to a steep flight of
+steps which Bink had hewn out of the bank after his working
+hours. He had found odd planks in the wood-house, and had
+contrived to face the steps with timber in a most respectable
+manner, rewarded by Daphne by sweet words and sweeter
+looks, and by such a shower of shillings that he had opened a
+post-office savings-bank book on the strength of her bounty, and
+felt himself on the road to fortune.</p>
+
+<p>There was the boat in all the smartness of new varnished
+wood. Daphne had given up her idea of a Pompeian red dado
+to oblige the boat-builder. There were the oars and sculls,
+with Daphne’s monogram in dark blue and gold; and there,
+glittering in the sunlight, was the name she had chosen for her
+craft, in bright golden letters—Nero.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a queer name to choose!’ said Edgar. ‘He was
+such an out-and-out beast, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not a bit of it,’ retorted Daphne. ‘I read an article yesterday
+in an old volume of Cornhill, in which the writer demonstrates
+that he was rather a nice man. He didn’t poison
+Britannicus; he didn’t make away with his mamma; he didn’t
+set fire to Rome, though he did play the violin beautifully. He
+was a very accomplished young man, and the historians of his
+time were silly <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">gobe-mouches</i>, who jotted down every ridiculous
+scandal that was floating in society. I think that Taci——what’s
+his name ought to be ashamed of himself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Nero has been set on his legs, has he?’ said Edgar
+carelessly, as he took the rudder lines, while Daphne bent over
+her sculls, and began—rather too vehemently—to feather.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</span>
+‘And I suppose Tiberius was a very meritorious monarch, and
+all those scandals about Capri were so many airy fictions?
+Well, it doesn’t make much difference to us, does it?—except
+that it will go hard with me by-and-by, when my boys come to
+learn the history of the future, to have the young scamps tell
+me that all I learnt at Rugby was bosh.’</p>
+
+<p>‘At Rugby!’ cried Daphne, suddenly earnest. ‘You were
+at Rugby with my brother, weren’t you? Were you great
+friends?’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar leant over the boat, concerned about some weeds that
+were possibly interfering with the rudder.</p>
+
+<p>‘We didn’t see much of each other. He was ever so much
+younger than I, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was he nice? Were people fond of him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Everybody was dreadfully sorry when he died of scarlet-fever, 
+poor fellow!’ answered Edgar, without looking at her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, it was terrible, was it not? I can just remember him.
+Such a bright, handsome boy; full of life and spirits. He used
+to tease me a good deal, but that is the nature of boys. And
+then, when I was at Brighton, there came a letter to say that
+he was dead, and I had to wear black frocks for ever so long.
+Poor Loftus! How dearly I should have loved him if he had
+lived!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; it would have been nice for you to have a brother,
+would it not?’ said Edgar, still with a shade of embarrassment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nice! It would have been my salvation, to have someone
+of my own kindred, quite my brother. I love Madoline, with
+all my heart and soul; but she is only my half-sister. I always
+feel that there is a difference between us. She is my superior;
+she comes of a better stock. Nobody ever talks of my mother,
+or my mother’s family; but Lina’s parentage is in everybody’s
+mouth; she seems to be related—at least in heraldry—to everybody
+worth knowing in the county. But Loftus would have
+been the same clay that I am made of, don’t you know, neither
+better nor worse. Blood is thicker than water.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s a morbid feeling of yours, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is it? I’m afraid I have a few morbid feelings.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Get rid of them. There never was a better sister than
+Madoline is to you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know it. She is perfection; but that only makes her
+further away from me. I reverence her, I look up to her and
+admire her; but I can never feel on an equality with her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That shows your good sense. It is an advantage for you
+to have someone to look up to.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; but I should like someone on my own level as well.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve got me,’ said Edgar bluntly. ‘Can’t you make a
+brother of me for the nonce?’</p>
+
+<p>‘For ever and always, if you like,’ replied Daphne. ‘I’m<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</span>
+sure I’ve got the best of the bargain. I don’t believe any
+brother would get up at five o’clock to teach me to row.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar felt very sure that Loftus would not have done it;
+that short-lived youth having been the very essence of selfishness,
+and debased by a marked inclination towards juvenile profligacy.</p>
+
+<p>‘Brothers are not the most self-sacrificing of human beings,’
+he said. ‘I think you’ll find finer instances of devotion in an
+Irish or a Scottish foster-brother than in the Saxon blood-relation.
+But Madoline is a sister in a thousand. Take care
+of that willow,’ as the boat shot under the drooping foliage of
+an ancient pollard. ‘How bright and happy she looked last
+night!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; she had just received a long letter from Gerald, and
+he talks of coming home sooner than she expected him. He
+will give up his fishing in Norway, though I believe he had
+engaged an inland sea all to himself, and he will be home before
+the end of July. Isn’t it nice? I am dying with curiosity to
+see what he is like.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Didn’t I describe him to you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘In the vaguest way. You said I was sure to like him. Now
+I have an invincible conviction that I shall detest him; just
+because it is my duty to feel a sisterly affection for him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Take care that you keep within the line of duty, and that
+your affection doesn’t go beyond the sisterly limit,’ said Edgar,
+with a grim smile. ‘There is no fear of the other thing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What a savage look!’ cried Daphne laughingly. ‘How
+horridly jealous you must be of him!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hasn’t he robbed me of my first love?’ demanded Edgar;
+‘and now——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be so gloomy. Didn’t you tell me you had got over
+your disappointment, and that you meant to be a dear useful
+bachelor-uncle to Madoline’s children by-and-by?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know about being always a bachelor,’ said Edgar
+doubtfully. ‘That would imply that I hadn’t got over my disappointment.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is what you said the other day. I am only quoting
+yourself against yourself. I like to think of you as a perpetual
+bachelor for Lina’s sake. It is a more poetical idea than the
+notion of your consoling yourself with somebody else.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yet a man does generally console himself. It is in human
+nature.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say another word,’ cried Daphne. ‘You are positively
+hateful this morning—so low and material. I’m afraid it must
+be the consequence of eggs and bacon, such a vulgar unæsthetic
+breakfast—Bink’s idea. I shall give you bread and butter and
+strawberries to-morrow, if MacCloskie will let me have any
+strawberries.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘If you were to talk a little less and row a little more, I think
+we should get on faster,’ suggested Edgar, smiling at her.</p>
+
+<p>They had got into a spot where a little green peninsula jutted
+out into the stream, and where the current was almost a whirlpool.
+The boat had been travelling in a circle for the last five
+minutes, while Daphne plied her sculls, unconscious of the fact.
+They were nearing Stratford; the low level meadows lay round
+them, the tall spire rose yonder, above the many-arched Gothic
+bridge built by good Sir Hugh Clopton before Shakespeare was
+born. William Shakespeare must have crossed it many and
+many a time, with the light foot of boyhood; a joyous spirit,
+finding ineffable delight in simplest things. And, again, after he
+had lived his life and had measured himself amidst the greatest
+minds of his age, in the greatest city of the world, and had toiled,
+and conquered independence and fame, and came back rich
+enough to buy the great house hard by the grammar-school, how
+often must he have lounged against the gray stone parapet, in
+the calm eventide, watching the light linger and fade upon the
+reedy river, bats and swallows skimming across the water, the
+grand old Gothic church embowered in trees, and the level meadows
+beyond!</p>
+
+<p>They were in the very heart of Shakespeare’s country.
+Yonder, far away to their right, lay the meadow-path by which
+he walked to Shottery. Memories of him were interwoven with
+every feature in the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>‘My father told me I was not to go beyond our own meadows,’
+said Daphne, ‘but of course he meant when I was alone.
+It is quite different when you are with me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Naturally. I think I am capable of taking care of you.’</p>
+
+<p>This kind of thing went on for another week of weather
+which at worst was showery. They breakfasted in the boat-house
+every morning, Daphne exercising all her ingenuity in the
+arrangement of the meal, and making rapid strides in the art of
+cookery.</p>
+
+<p>It must be confessed that Mr. Turchill seemed to enjoy the
+breakfasts suggested by the vulgar-minded Bink, rather more
+than those which were direct emanations of Daphne’s delicate
+fancy. He liked broiled mackerel better than cream and raspberry
+jam. He preferred devilled kidneys to honeycomb and
+milk-rolls. But whatever Daphne set before him he ate with
+thankfulness. It was so sweet to spend his mornings in this
+bright joyous company. It was a grand thing to have so intelligent
+a pupil, for Daphne was becoming very skilful in the
+management of her boat. She was able to navigate her bark
+safely through the most difficult bits of the deep swift river.
+She could shoot the narrow arches of Stratford bridge in as good
+style as a professional waterman.</p>
+
+<p>But when two young pure-minded people are enjoying themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</span>
+in this frank, easy-going fashion, there is generally some
+one of mature age near at hand to suggest evil, and to put a stop
+to their enjoyment. So it was in this case. The Rector’s wife
+heard of her niece’s watery meanderings and gipsy breakfasts,
+and took upon herself to interfere. Mr. MacCloskie, who had
+reluctantly furnished a dish of forced strawberries for the boat-house
+breakfast, happened to stroll over to Arden Rectory in the
+afternoon with a basket of the same fruit, as an offering from
+himself to Mrs. Ferrers—an inevitable half-crown tip to the
+head gardener, and dear at the price in the lady’s opinion. Naturally
+a man of MacCloskie’s consequence required refreshment
+after his walk; so Mrs. Todd entertained him in her snug little
+sanctum next the pantry, with a dish of strong tea and a crusty
+knob of home-baked bread, lavishly buttered. Whereupon, in
+the course of conversation, Mr. MacCloskie let fall that Miss
+Daphne was carrying on finely with Mr. Turchill, of Hawksyard,
+and that he supposed that would be a match some of these days.
+Pressed for details, he described the early breakfasts at the boat-house,
+the long mornings spent on the river, the afternoons at
+billiards, the tea-drinkings in the conservatory. All this Todd,
+who was an irrepressible gossip, retailed to her mistress next
+morning, when the bill of fare had been written, and the campaign
+of gluttony for the next twenty-four hours had been carefully
+mapped out.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers heard with the air of profound indifference
+which she always assumed on such occasions.</p>
+
+<p>‘MacCloskie is an incorrigible gossip,’ she said, ‘and you are
+almost as bad.’</p>
+
+<p>But, directly she had dismissed Todd, the fair Rhoda went
+up to her dressing-room and arrayed herself for a rural walk.
+Life in a pastoral district, with a husband of few ideas, will now
+and then wax monotonous, and Rhoda was glad to have some
+little mental excitement—something which made it necessary for
+her to bestir herself, and which enabled her to be useful, after her
+manner, to her kith and kin.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall not speak to her father, yet,’ she said to herself. ‘He
+has strict ideas of propriety, and might be too severe. Madoline
+must remonstrate with her.’</p>
+
+<p>She walked across the smiling fields, light of foot, buoyed up
+by the pleasing idea that she was performing a Christian duty,
+that her errand was in all things befitting her double position as
+near relation and pastor’s wife. She felt that if Fate had made
+her a man she would have been an excellent bishop. All the
+sterner duties of that high calling—visitations, remonstrances,
+suspensions—would have come easy to her.</p>
+
+<p>She found Madoline in the morning-room, the French windows
+wide open, the balcony full of flowers, the tables and
+mantelpiece and cabinets all abloom with roses.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Sorry to interrupt your morning practice, dearest,’ said Mrs.
+Ferrers as Madoline rose from the piano. ‘You play those sweet
+classic bits so deliciously. Mendelssohn, is it not?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; Raff. How early you are, Aunt Rhoda!’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have something very particular to say to you, Lina, so I
+came directly I had done with Todd.’</p>
+
+<p>This kind of address from a woman of Rhoda’s type generally
+forbodes unpleasantness. Madoline looked alarmed.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s nothing wrong, I hope,’ she faltered.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not absolutely—not intentionally wrong, I trust,’ said Mrs.
+Ferrers. ‘But it must be put a stop to immediately.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline turned pale. In the days that were gone Aunt
+Rhoda had always been a dreadful nuisance to the servants.
+She had been perpetually making unpleasant discoveries—peculations,
+dissipations, and carryings-on of divers kinds. Not
+unfrequently she had stumbled upon mares’-nests, and after
+making everybody uncomfortable for a week or two, had been
+constrained to confess herself mistaken. Her rule at South Hill
+had not been peace. And now Lina feared that, even outside
+the house, Aunt Rhoda had contrived to make one of her terrible
+discoveries. Someone had been giving away the milk or
+selling the corn, or stealing garden-stuff.</p>
+
+<p>‘What is it, Aunt Rhoda?’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers did not give a direct answer. Her cold gray
+eyes made the circuit of the room, and then she asked:</p>
+
+<p>‘Where is Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘In her own room—lying down, I think, tired out with
+rowing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And where is Mr. Turchill?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gone home. He had some important business, I believe—a
+horse to look at.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, he does go home sometimes?’</p>
+
+<p>‘How curiously you talk, Aunt Rhoda. Is there any harm
+in his coming here as often as he likes? He is our oldest friend.
+Papa treats him like a son.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, no harm, of course, if Vernon is satisfied. But I
+don’t wonder Daphne is tired, and is lying down at mid-day—a
+horribly lazy, unladylike habit, by the way. Are you aware
+that she is down at the boat-house before seven every morning?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly, aunt. It is much nicer for her to row at that
+early hour than later in the day. Edgar is teaching her; she is
+quite safe in his care.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And do you know that there is a gipsy breakfast every
+morning in the boat-house?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have heard something about a tea-kettle, and ham and
+eggs. Daphne has an idea that she is learning to cook.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And do you approve of all this?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</span></p>
+
+<p>Madoline smiled at the question. ‘I like her to be happy.
+I think she wastes a good deal of time; that she is doing nothing
+to carry on her education; but idleness is only natural in
+a girl of her age, and she has been at home such a short time,
+and she is so fond of the river.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Has it never occurred to you, Madoline, that there is some
+impropriety in these <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> mornings with Edgar Turchill?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Impropriety! Impropriety in Daphne being on friendly
+terms with Edgar—Edgar, who has been brought up with us
+almost as a brother!’</p>
+
+<p>‘With you, perhaps; not with Daphne. She has spent most
+of her life away from South Hill. She is little more than a
+stranger to Mr. Turchill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She would be very much surprised if you were to tell her
+so, and so would Edgar. Why, he used always to make himself
+her playfellow in her holidays, before she went to Madame
+Tolmache.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That was all very well while she was in short frocks. But
+she is now a woman, and people will talk about her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘About Daphne, my innocent childlike sister, little more
+than a child in years, quite a child in gaiety and light-heartedness!
+How can such an idea enter your head, Aunt Rhoda?
+Surely the most hardened scandalmonger could not find anything
+to say against Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Madoline,’ began Mrs. Ferrers severely, ‘you are
+usually so sensible in all you do and say that I really wonder
+at the way you are talking this morning. There are certain
+rules of conduct, established time out of mind, for well-bred
+young women; and Daphne can no more violate those rules
+with impunity than anybody else can. It is not because she
+wears her hair down her back and her petticoats immodestly
+scanty that she is to go scot-free,’ added Aunt Rhoda in a little
+involuntary burst of malevolence.</p>
+
+<p>She had not been fond of Daphne as a child; she liked her
+much less as a young woman. To a well-preserved woman of
+forty, who still affects to be young, there is apt to be something
+aggravating in the wild freshness and unconscious insolence of
+lovely seventeen.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aunt Rhoda, I think you forget that Daphne is my sister—my
+very dear sister.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your half-sister, Madoline. I forget nothing. It is you
+who forget that there are reasons in Daphne’s antecedents why
+we should be most especially careful about her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is unkind of you to speak of that, aunt,’ protested
+Madoline, blushing. ‘As to Edgar Turchill, he is my father’s
+favourite companion; he is devoted to all of us. There can
+be no possible harm in his being a kind of adopted brother to
+Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘He was an adopted brother to you three years ago, and we
+all know what came of it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Pshaw! That was a foolish fancy, and is all over and
+done with.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The same thing may happen in Daphne’s case.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it should, would you be sorry? I am sure I should not.
+I know my father would approve.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, if Vernon is satisfied with the state of affairs, I can
+have nothing further to say,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers with dignity;
+‘but if Daphne were my daughter—and Heaven forbid I should
+ever have such a responsibility as an overgrown girl of that
+temperament!—I would allow no boat-house breakfastings, no
+meanderings on the Avon. However, it is no business of mine,’
+concluded Mrs. Ferrers with an injured air, having said all she
+had to say. ‘How is your water-lily counterpane getting on?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nearly finished,’ answered Madoline, delighted to change
+the conversation. ‘It will be ready for papa’s birthday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How is my brother, by-the-by?’</p>
+
+<p>‘He has been complaining of rheumatic pains. I’m afraid
+we shall have to spend next winter abroad.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What nonsense, Lina! It is mere hypochondria on Vernon’s
+part. He was always full of fancies. He is as well as
+I am.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He does not think so himself, aunt; and he ought to know
+best.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not sure of that. A hypochondriac may fancy he
+has hydrophobia, but he is not obliged to be right. You foster
+Vernon’s imaginary complaints by pretending to believe in
+them.’</p>
+
+<p>Lina did not argue the point, perceiving very plainly that
+her aunt was out of temper. Nor did she press that lady to
+stay to luncheon, nor offer any polite impediment to her departure.
+But the interference of starched propriety had the usual
+effect. Lightly as Madoline had seemed to hold her aunt’s
+advice, she was too thorough a woman not to act upon it. She
+went up to Daphne’s room directly Mrs. Ferrers left the house.
+She stole softly in, so as not to disturb the girl’s slumber, and
+seated herself by the open window calmly to await her waking.
+Daphne’s room was one of the prettiest in the house. It had
+a wide window, overlooking the pastoral valley and winding
+Avon. It was neatly furnished with birchwood, and turquoise
+cretonne, and white and gold crockery, but it was sorely out
+of order. Daphne’s gowns of yesterday and the day before
+were flung on the sofa. Daphne’s hats of all the week round
+were strewed on tables and chairs. Her sunshade lay across
+the dressing-table among the brushes, and scent bottles, and
+flower-glasses, and pincushions, and trumpery. She had no
+maid of her own, and her sister’s maid, in whose articles of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</span>
+service it was to attend upon her, had renounced that duty as
+a task impossible of performance. No well-drilled maid could
+have anything to do—except when positively obliged—with
+such an untidy and unpunctual young lady. A young lady
+who would appoint to have her hair dressed and her gown
+laced at seven, and come running into the house breathless
+and panting at twenty minutes to eight; a young lady who
+made hay of her cuffs and collars whenever she was in a hurry,
+and whose drawer of ribbons was always being upheaved as if
+by an earthquake. Daphne, being remonstrated with and
+complained of, protested that she would infinitely rather wait
+upon herself than be worried.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are all goodness, Lina dear, but half a maid is no
+maid. I would rather do without one altogether,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>The room was not absolutely ugly, even in its disorder.
+All the things that were scattered about were pretty things.
+There were a good many ornaments, such as are apt to be
+accumulated by young ladies with plenty of pocket-money,
+and very little common sense. Mock Venetian-glass flower-vases
+of every shape and colour; Japanese cups and saucers,
+and fans and screens; Swiss brackets; willow-pattern plates;
+a jumble of everything trumpery and fashionable; flowers
+everywhere, and the atmosphere sickly sweet with the odour
+of tuberose.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne stirred in her sleep, faintly conscious of a new
+presence in the room, sighed, turned on her pillow, and presently
+sat up, flushed and towzled, in her indigo gown, just as
+she had come in from her boating excursion.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you had a nice nap, dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lovely. I was awfully tired. We rowed to Stratford
+Weir.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you are quite able to row now?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Edgar says I scull as well as he does.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then, dearest, I think you ought to dispense with Edgar in
+future and keep to our own meadows, as papa said he wished
+you to do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh!’ said Daphne. ‘Is that a message from my father?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, dear. But I am sure it will be better for you to consider
+his wishes upon this point. He is very particular about
+being obeyed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh! very well, Lina. Of course if you wish it I will tell
+Edgar the course of lessons is concluded. He has been awfully
+good. It will be rather slow without him. But I was beginning
+to find the breakfasts a weight on my mind. It was so
+difficult to maintain variety—and Bink has such low ideas.
+Do you know that he actually suggested sausages—pork-sausages
+in June! And I could not make him comprehend the
+nauseousness of the notion.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Then it is understood, darling, that you row by yourself in
+future. I know my father would prefer it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You prefer it, Lina; that is enough for me,’ answered
+Daphne in her coaxing way. ‘But I think I ought to give
+Edgar some little present for all his goodness to me. A smoking-cap,
+or a cigar-case, or an antimacassar for his mother. I
+could work it in crewels, don’t you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You never finish anything, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because the beginning is always so much nicer. But if I
+should break down in this, you would finish it, wouldn’t you,
+Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>‘With pleasure, my pet.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was told that evening that his services as a teacher of
+rowing would no longer be required. And though the fact was
+imparted to him with infinite sweetness, he felt as if half the
+sunshine was taken out of his life.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘GOD WOTE THAT WORLDLY JOY IS SONE AGO.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Perfect</span> mistress of her boat, Daphne revelled in the lonely
+delight of the river. She felt no grief at the loss of Mr. Turchill’s
+company. He had been very kind to her, he had been
+altogether devoted and unselfish, and the gipsy breakfasts in
+the old boat-house had been capital fun. But these delights
+would have palled in time; while the languid pleasure of drifting
+quietly down the stream, thinking her own thoughts, dreaming
+her own dreams, could never know satiety. She was so full
+of thoughts, sweet thoughts, vague fancies, visions of an impossible
+future, dreams which made up half her life. What did it
+matter that this airy fantastic castle she had built for herself
+was no earthly edifice, that she could never live in it, or be any
+nearer it than she was to-day? To her the thing existed, were
+it only in dreamland; it was a part of herself and of her life,
+it was of more consequence to her than the commonplace routine
+of daily existence—the dressing, and dining, and driving,
+and visiting.</p>
+
+<p>Had her life been more varied, full of duty, or even diversified
+by the frivolous activity of pleasure, she could not have
+thus given herself up to dreaming. But she had few pleasures
+and no duties. Madoline held her absolved from every care
+and every trouble on the ground of her youth. She did not like
+parish work of any kind; she hated the idea of visiting the poor;
+so Madoline held her excused from that duty, as from all others.
+Her mind would awaken to the serious side of life when she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</span>
+was older, her sister thought. She seemed now to belong to
+the flowers and butterflies, and the fair ephemeral things of the
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Daphne, ignored by her father, indulged by her sister,
+enjoyed a freedom which is rarely accorded to a girl of seventeen.
+Her Aunt Rhoda looked on and disapproved, and hoped
+piously that she would come to no harm, and was surprised at
+Lina’s weakness, and thought Daphne’s bright little boat a blot
+upon the landscape when it came gliding down the river below
+the Rectory windows. The parson’s rich glebe was conterminous
+with Sir Vernon Lawford’s property, and Daphne hardly
+knew where her father’s fields ended or where the church fields
+began.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar Turchill, degraded from his post of instructor, still
+contrived to spend a considerable portion of his life at South
+Hill. If he was not there for lawn-tennis in the afternoon, with
+the Rector’s wife for a fourth, he was there in the evening for
+billiards. He fetched and carried for Madoline, rode over to
+Warwick to get her a new book, or to Leamington to match a
+skein of crewel. There was no commission too petty for him,
+no office too trivial or lowly, so that he might be permitted to
+spend his time with the sisters.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne thought this devotedness a bad sign, and began to
+fear that the canker was at his heart, and that he would die for
+love of Madoline when the fortunate Gerald came home to claim
+her.</p>
+
+<p>‘You poor creature,’ she said to him one day, ‘you foolish
+moth, why flutter round the flame that must destroy you? I
+declare you are getting worse every day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are wrong,’ said Edgar; ‘I believe I am getting cured.’</p>
+
+<p>What did Daphne dream about in those languid summer
+mornings, as her boat moved slowly down the stream in the
+cool shadow of the willows, with only a gentle dip of the sculls
+now and then to keep her straight? Her thoughts were all of the
+past, her fancies were all of the future. Her thoughts were of
+the nameless stranger who went across the Jura last year—one
+little year ago—almost at this season. Her dreams were of meeting
+him again. Yet the chances against such a meeting reduced
+it almost to an impossibility.</p>
+
+<p>‘The world is so horribly large,’ she reflected sadly, ‘and I
+told him such atrocious stories. It will be a just punishment if
+I never see him any more. Yet how am I to live through
+my life without ever looking on his face again!’</p>
+
+<p>It had gone so far as this: it seemed to her almost an absolute
+need of her soul that they two should meet, and know more
+of each other.</p>
+
+<p>The ardent sensive nature had been thus deeply impressed
+by the first bright and picturesque image presented to the girlish<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</span>
+fancy. It was something more than love at first sight. It was
+the awakening of a fresh young mind to the passion of love. She
+had changed from a child to a woman, in the hour when she
+met the unknown in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is he, what is he? where shall I find him?’ she asked
+herself. ‘He is the only man I can ever love. He is the only
+man I will ever marry. All other men are low and commonplace
+beside him.’</p>
+
+<p>The river was the confidant and companion of all her dreams—the
+sweet lonely river, flowing serenely between green pastures,
+where the cattle stood in tranquil idleness, pastern deep in
+purple clover. She had no other ear into which to whisper her
+secret. She had tried, ever so many times, to tell Madoline, and
+had failed. Lina was so sensible, and would be deeply shocked
+at such folly. How could she tell Lina—whose wooing had been
+conducted in the most conventionally correct manner, with
+everybody’s consent and approval—that she had flung her heart
+under the feet of a nameless stranger, of whom the only one fact
+she knew was that he was engaged to be married?</p>
+
+<p>So she kept this one foolish secret locked in her own breast.
+The passion was not deep enough to make her miserable, or to
+spoil the unsophisticated joys of her life. Perhaps it was rather
+fancy than passion. It was fed and fostered by all her dreams.
+But her life was in no wise unhappy because this love lacked
+more substantial food than dreaming. God had given her that
+intense delight in Nature, that love of His beautiful earth, for
+which Faustus thanked his creator. Field, streamlet, wood, and
+garden, were sources of inexhaustible pleasure. She loved animals
+of all kinds. The gray Jersey cows in the marshy water-meadows; 
+the house dogs, and yard dogs, and stable terriers—supposed
+to be tremendous at rats, yet never causing any perceptible
+diminution of that prolific race; the big white horses
+at the farm, with their coarse plebeian tails tied up into tight
+knots, their manes elaborately plaited, and their harness bedizened
+with much brazen ornamentation; Madoline’s exquisite
+pair of dark chestnuts, thoroughbred to the tips of their delicate
+ears; Sir Vernon’s massive roadster; Boiler and Crock, the old
+carriage-horses—Daphne had an affection for them all. They
+were living things, with soft friendly eyes, more unvaryingly
+kind than human eyes, and they all seemed to love her. She
+was more at her ease with them than in the dimly-lighted,
+flower-scented drawing-room, where Sir Vernon always seemed
+to look at her as if he wished her away, and where her aunt
+worried her about her want of deportment.</p>
+
+<p>With Lina she was always happy. Lina’s love and gentleness
+never varied.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne came home after a morning wasted on the river, to
+sit at her sister’s feet while she worked, or to lie on the sofa<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</span>
+while Lina read to her, glad to get in the thin edge of the educational
+wedge in the form of an interesting article from one of
+the Quarterlies, or a few pages of good poetry. Daphne was a
+fervent lover of verse, so that it came within the limits of her
+comprehension. Her tastes were catholic; she worshipped Shakespeare;
+she adored Byron and Shelley and Tennyson, Mrs.
+Browning, and the simpler poems of Robert Browning; and she
+had heard vaguely of verses written by a poet called Swinburne;
+but this was all she had been permitted to learn of the latest
+development of the lyric muse. Byron and Tennyson, it is needless
+to say, were her especial favourites.</p>
+
+<p>‘One makes me feel wicked, and the other makes me feel
+good; but I adore them both,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t see what you can find in Childe Harold to make you
+wicked,’ argued Madoline, who had the old-fashioned idea, hereditary
+of course, that Byron was the poet of the century.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I can hardly tell you; but there is a something, a sense
+of shortcoming in the world generally, an idea that life is not
+worth living, that amidst all that is most beautiful and sacred
+and solemn and interesting upon earth, one might just as well
+be dead; one would be better off than walking about a world in
+which virtue was never rightly rewarded, truth and honour and
+courage or lofty thoughts never fairly understood—where everything
+is at sixes and sevens, in short. I know I express myself
+horribly, but the feeling is difficult to explain.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think what you mean is that Byron, even at his loftiest
+and best, wrote like a misanthrope.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose that’s it. Now, Tennyson, though his poetry
+never lifts me to the skies, makes me feel that earth is a good
+place and heaven better; that high thoughts and noble deeds
+bear their fruit somehow, and somewhere; that it is better to
+suffer a good deal, and sacrifice one’s dearest desires in the cause
+of duty and right, than to snatch some brief joys out of life, and
+perish like the insects that are born and die in a day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so glad you can enjoy good poetry, dear,’ said Madoline,
+delighted at any surcease of frivolity in her young sister.</p>
+
+<p>‘Enjoy it! I revel in it; it is my delight. Pray don’t suppose
+that I dislike books, Lina. Only keep away from me grammars,
+and geographies, and biographies of learned men, and
+voyages to the North Pole—there is a South Pole, too, isn’t
+there, dear? though nobody even seems to worry about it—and
+you may read me as many books as you like.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How condescending of you, little one!’ said Madoline, smiling
+at the bright young face looking up from the sofa-pillow, on
+which Daphne’s golden head reclined in luxurious restfulness.
+‘Well, I will read to you with pleasure. It will be my delight
+to help to carry on your education; for though girls learn an
+immense number of things at school they don’t seem to know<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</span>
+much when they come away. We will read together for a couple
+of hours a day if you like, dear.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Till Gerald comes home,’ retorted Daphne; ‘he will not let
+you give me two hours of your life every day. He will want
+you all to himself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He can join our studies; he is a great reader.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Expose my ignorance to a future brother-in-law? Not for
+worlds!’ cried Daphne. ‘Let us talk about him, Lina. Aren’t
+you delighted to think he is coming home?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I am very glad.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How do my father and Gerald get on together?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not too well, I am sorry to say. Papa is fonder of Edgar
+than of Gerald, you know how prejudiced he is about race and
+high birth. I don’t think he has ever quite forgiven Gerald his
+father’s trade.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But there is Lady Geraldine to fall back upon. Surely she
+makes amends.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hardly, according to papa’s ideas. You see the Earldom of
+Heronville is only a creation of Charles the Second’s reign, and
+his peerages are not always respectable. I believe there were
+scandals about the first countess. Her portrait by Sir Peter
+Lely hangs in the refectory at Goring Abbey. She was a very
+lovely woman, and Lady Geraldine was rather proud of being
+thought like her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Although she was not respectable,’ said Daphne. ‘And
+was there really a likeness?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; and a marked one. I can see it even in Gerald, who
+is the image of his mother—the same dreamy eyes, the same
+thoughtful mouth. But you will be able to judge for yourself
+when Gerald comes home, for I have no doubt we shall be going
+over to the Abbey.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The Abbey! It is a very old place, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; it was built by Mr. Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why Abbey? Surely that means an old place that was
+once inhabited by monks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was Mr. Goring’s fancy. He insisted upon calling his
+house an abbey. It was foolish, of course; but, though he was
+a very good man, I believe he had a slight leaven of obstinacy
+in his disposition, and when once he had made up his mind
+about anything he was not to be turned from his purpose.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perverse old creature! And is the Abbey nice?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is as grand and as beautiful a place as money could make
+it. There are cloisters copied from those at Muckross, and the
+dining-room has a Gothic roof, and is called a refectory. The
+situation is positively lovely: a richly timbered valley, sheltered
+by green hills.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you are to be mistress of this magnificent place. Oh,
+Lina, what shall I do when you are married, and I am left<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</span>
+alone here <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> with papa? How shall I support my
+life?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, by that time you will have learned to understand
+your father, and you will be quite at your ease with him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think not. I am afraid he is one of those mysteries
+which I shall never fathom.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My love, that is such a foolish notion. Besides, in a year
+or two my Daphne may have a husband and a house of her own—perhaps
+a more interesting place then Goring Abbey,’ added
+Lina, thinking of Hawksyard, which seemed to her Daphne’s
+natural destination.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>June ripened, and bloomed, and grew daily more beautiful.
+It was peerless weather, with just such blue skies and sunny
+noontides as there had been at Fontainebleau last year, but
+without the baking heat and the breathless atmosphere. Here
+there were cool winds to lift the rippling hair from Daphne’s
+brow, and cool grass under her feet. She revelled in the summer
+beauty of the earth; she spent almost all her life out of
+doors, on the river, in the woods, in the garden. If she studied,
+it was under the spreading boughs of the low Spanish chestnut
+which made a tent of greenery on the lawn. Sometimes she
+carried her drawing-book to some point of vantage on a neighbouring
+hill, and sketched the outline of a wide range of
+landscape, and washed in a sky, and began a tree in the foreground,
+and left off in disgust. She never finished anything.
+Her portfolio was full of beginnings, not altogether devoid of
+talent: mouse-coloured cows, deep-red oxen, every kind of tree
+and rock and old English cottage, or rick-yard, or gray stone
+village church; but nothing finished—the stamp of an impetuous,
+impatient temper upon all.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no definite announcement as to Gerald’s
+return. He was in Sweden, seeing wonderful falls and grottoes,
+which he described in his letters to Madoline, and he was
+coming back soon, perhaps before the end of July. He had
+told the Abbey servants to be prepared for him at any time.
+This indefiniteness kept Madoline’s mind in a somewhat perturbed
+state; yet she had to be outwardly calm, and full of
+thoughtfulness for her father, who required constant attention.
+His love for his elder daughter was the one redeeming grace
+of a selfish nature. It was a selfish love, for he would have
+willingly let her waste her life in maiden solitude for the sake
+of keeping her by his side; but it was love, and this was something
+in a man of so stern and unyielding a temper.</p>
+
+<p>He liked her to be always near him, always within call, his
+companion abroad, his counsellor at home. He consulted her
+about all the details of his estate and her own, rarely wrote a
+business letter without reading it to her. She was wanted in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</span>
+his study continually. When he was tired after a morning’s
+business, she read the newspapers to him, or a heavy political
+article in Blackwood or one of the Quarterlies, were he inclined
+to hear it. She never shirked a duty, or considered her own
+pleasure. She had educated herself to be her father’s companion,
+and counted it a privilege to minister to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Faultless daughter, perfect wife,’ said Sir Vernon, clasping
+her hand as she sat beside his sofa; ‘Goring is a lucky fellow
+to get such a prize.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should he not have a good wife, dear father? He is
+good himself. Remember what a good son he was.’</p>
+
+<p>‘To his mother, admirable. I doubt if he and old Goring
+hit it quite so well. I wish he came of a better stock.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is a prejudice of yours, father.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a prejudice that I have rarely seen belied by experience.
+I wish you had chosen Edgar. There is a fine fellow
+for you, a lineal descendant of that Turchill who was sheriff
+of Warwickshire in the reign of the Confessor. Shakespeare’s
+mother could trace her descent from the same stock. So you see
+that Edgar can claim alliance with the greatest poet of all time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should never have thought it,’ said Madoline laughingly;
+‘his lineage doesn’t show itself in his conversation. I like him
+very much, you know, papa; indeed, I may say I love him, but
+it is in a thoroughly sisterly fashion. By-the-by, papa, don’t
+you think he might make an excellent husband for Daphne?’
+she faltered, with downcast eyes, as she went on with her
+crewel-work.</p>
+
+<p>‘She would be an uncommonly fortunate girl if she got
+him,’ retorted Sir Vernon, with a clouding countenance; ‘he is
+too good for her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, father! can you speak like that of your own daughter?’
+remonstrated Lina.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is a man to shut his eyes to a girl’s character because she
+happens to bear his name?’ asked Sir Vernon impatiently.
+‘Daphne is a lump of self-indulgent frivolity.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed you are mistaken,’ cried Lina; ‘she is very sweet-tempered
+and loving.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sweet-tempered! Yes; I know the kind of thing. Winning
+words, pretty looks, trivial fascinations; a creature whose
+movements you watch—fascinated by her variety—as you
+watch a bird in a cage. Graceful, beautiful, false, worthless!
+I have some experience of the type.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Father, this is the most cruel prejudice. What can Daphne
+have ever done to offend you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Done! Is she not her mother’s daughter? Don’t argue
+with me about her, Lina. She is here beside my hearth, and I
+must make the best of her. God grant she may come to no
+harm; but I am full of fear when I think of her future.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Then you would be glad if Edgar were to propose for her,
+and she were to accept him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly. It would be the very best thing that could
+happen to her. I should only feel sorry for him. But I don’t
+think a man who once loved you would ever content himself
+with Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is very attentive to her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Che sara, sara!</i>’ murmured Sir Vernon languidly.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was Midsummer-day—the hottest, brightest day there had
+been yet, and Daphne had given herself up to unmixed enjoyment
+of the warmth and light and cloudless blue sky. Sir
+Vernon and Madoline had a luncheon engagement at a house
+beyond Stoneleigh, a drive of eleven miles each way, so dinner
+had been postponed from eight to half-past, and Daphne had
+the livelong day to herself; free to follow her own devices, free
+even from the company of her devoted slave Edgar, who would
+have hung upon her like a burr had he been at home, but who
+was spending a few days in London with his mother, escorting
+that somewhat homely matron to picture-galleries, garden-parties,
+and theatres, and trying to rub off a year’s rural rust by
+a week’s metropolitan friction.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was away; the light park-phaeton with the chestnuts
+had driven off at half-past eleven, Madoline looking lovely in a
+Madras muslin gown and a bonnet made of roses, her father content
+to loll in the low seat by her side while she managed the
+somewhat vivacious cobs. Daphne watched the carriage till it
+vanished at a curve of the narrow wooded drive, and then ran
+back to the house to plan her own campaign.</p>
+
+<p>‘I will have a picnic,’ she said to herself, ‘a solitary, selfish,
+Robinson Crusoe-like picnic. I will have nobody but Tennyson
+and Lina’s collie to keep me company. Goldie and I will go
+trespassing, and find a sly secret corner in Charlecote Park where
+we can eat our luncheon. I believe it is against the law to stray
+from the miserable footpath; but who cares for law on Midsummer-day?
+I shall feel myself almost as brave as Shakespeare
+when he went poaching; and thank goodness there is no Justice
+Shallow to call me to order.’</p>
+
+<p>She ran to her own room for a basket, a picturesque beehive
+basket, the very one she had carried—and he had carried—at
+Fontainebleau. What a foolish impulse it must have been which
+made her touch the senseless straw with her lips, remembering
+whose hand had held it! Then to the housekeeper’s room to
+forage for provisions. The wing of a chicken: a thick wedge
+of pound-cake; a punnet of strawberries; a bottle of lemonade;
+a couple of milk-rolls. Mrs. Spicer would have packed these
+things neatly in white paper, but Daphne bundled them into the
+basket anyhow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t trouble, you dear good soul; they are only for Goldie
+and me,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘You may just as well have things nice, miss. There, you’d
+have forgot the salt if I wasn’t here. And if you’re going to
+take that there obstreperous collie you’ll want something more
+substantial.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Give me a slice of beef for him then, and a couple more of
+your delicious rolls,’ asked Daphne coaxingly. ‘My Goldie
+mustn’t be starved. And be quick, like a love, for I’m in an
+awful hurry.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lor, miss, when you’ve got all the day before you! You’ll
+be fearful lonesome.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What, with Goldie and the “Idylls of the King!”’ exclaimed
+Daphne, glancing downwards at her little green cloth
+volume.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, well; I know when young ladies have got a nice novel
+to read they never feel lonesome,’ said Mrs. Spicer, filling every
+available corner of the basket, with which Daphne stepped off
+gaily to summon Goldie.</p>
+
+<p>Goldie was a bright yellow collie, intensely vivacious, sharp-nosed,
+brown-eyed; a dog that knew not what it was to be quiet;
+a dog you might lose at the other end of the county, confident
+that he would scamper home across wood and hill and valley as
+straight as the crow’s flight. He spent half his life tied up in
+the stable-yard, and the other half rushing about the country
+with Daphne. He travelled an incalculable number of miles in
+the course of an ordinary walk, and was given to racing cattle.
+He worshipped Daphne, and held her in some awe on this cattle
+question; would leap into the air with mad delight when she
+was kind to him, or grovel at her feet when she was angry.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Goldie dear, if you and I are to lunch in Charlecote
+Park, I must take a strap for you,’ said Daphne, as they started
+from the stable-yard, Goldie proclaiming his rapture by clamorous
+barking. ‘It will never do for you to go racing the Lucy
+deer, or even the Lucy oxen. We should get into worse trouble
+than Shakespeare did, for Shakespeare had not such a frigid
+father as mine. I daresay old John, the glover, was an easy-going
+indulgent soul whom his son could treat anyhow.’</p>
+
+<p>It was only a walk of two miles across the fields to Charlecote;
+two miles by meadows that are as lovely and as richly
+timbered as they could have been in Shakespeare’s time. High
+farming is not yet the rule in Warwickshire. Hedges grow high
+and wild; broad oaks spread their kingly branches above the
+rich rank grass; dock and mallow, foxglove, fern, and dog-rose
+thrive and bloom beside every ditch; and many a fair stretch of
+grass by the roadside—a no man’s land of pleasant pasture—offers
+space for the hawker’s van, or the children’s noonday
+sports, or the repose of the tired tramp, lying face downwards in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</span>
+a rapture of rest, while the skylark trills in the distant blue
+above him, and the rustle of summer leaves soothes his
+slumber.</p>
+
+<p>It is a lovely country, lovely in its simple, pastoral, English
+beauty, calm and fitting cradle for a great mind.</p>
+
+<p>After the fields came a lane, a green arcade with a leafy roof,
+through which the sun-rays crept in quivering lines of light, and
+then the gate that opened on the footpath across Charlecote
+Park. Yonder showed the gray walls of the house, venerable on
+one side, modern on the other, and the stone single-arched
+bridge, and the lake, narrowing to a dull sluggish-looking stream
+that seemed to flow nowhere in particular. The tallest and
+stoutest of the elms looked too young for Shakespeare’s time.
+But here and there appeared the ruin of a tree, hollow of trunk,
+gaunt of limb, whose green branches may once have sheltered the
+deer he stole.</p>
+
+<p>The place was very lonely. There was nobody to interfere
+with Daphne’s pleasure, or even to object to the collie, who crept
+meekly to her side, held by a strap, and casting longing looks at
+the distant oxen. She wandered about in the loneliest bits of
+the park, supremely indifferent to rules and regulations as to
+where she might go and where she might not; till she finally
+deposited her basket and sunshade under a stalwart oak, and sat
+down at the foot thereof, with Goldie still strapped, and constrained
+to virtue. She fastened one end of the strap to the
+lowest branch of the tree, Goldie standing on end licking her
+hands all the time.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, dear, you are as comfortable as in your own stable-yard.
+You can admire the cows and sheep in the distance, standing
+about so peacefully in the sunshine, as if they had never
+heard of sunstroke, but you can’t hunt them. And now you
+shall have your dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>It was a very quiet picnic, perhaps even a trifle dull; though,
+at the worst, it might be better to picnic alone among the four-footed
+beasts in Charlecote Park, than to assume a forced gaiety
+in a party of stupid people, at the conventional banquet of doubtful
+lobster and tepid champagne, in one of the time-honoured
+haunts of the cockney picknicker. Daphne thought of Midsummer-day
+in the year that was gone, as she sat eating her
+chicken and sipping her lemonade, half of which had been lost in
+the process of uncorking. How gay she had been, how foolishly,
+unreasonably glad! And now a great deal of the flavour had
+gone out of life since her seventeenth birthday.</p>
+
+<p>‘How happy Lina looks, now that the time for her lover’s
+return draws near!’ she thought. ‘She has something to look
+forward to, some reason for counting the days; while to me
+time is all alike, one week just the same as another. I am a
+horribly selfish creature. I ought to feel glad of her gladness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</span>
+I ought to rejoice in her joy. But Nature made me out of poor
+stuff, didn’t she, Goldie dear?’</p>
+
+<p>She laid her bright head on the collie’s tawny coat. The
+pale gold of her soft flowing hair contrasted and yet harmonised
+with the ruddy hue of the dog, and made a picture fair to look
+upon. But there was no one wandering in Charlecote Park to
+paint Daphne’s portrait. She was very lucky in not being discovered
+by a party of eager Americans, spectacled, waterproofed,
+hyper-intelligent, and knowing a great deal more about Shakespeare’s
+biography than is known to the duller remnant of the
+Anglo-Saxon race still extant on this side the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<p>She ate her strawberries in dreamy thoughtfulness, and fed
+Goldie to repletion, till he stretched himself luxuriously upon
+her gown, and dreamed of a chase he was too lazy to follow, had
+he been ever so free. Then she shut the empty basket, propped
+herself up against the rugged old trunk, and opened the ‘Idylls.’
+It is a book to be read over and over again, for ever and ever,
+just one of those rare books of which the soul knows no weariness—like
+Shakespeare, or Goethe’s Faust, or Childe Harold—a
+book to be opened, haphazard, anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne did not so open the volume. Elaine was her
+poem of poems, and it was Elaine she read to-day in that placid
+shade amidst green pastures and venerable trees, under a cloudless
+sky. Launcelot was her ideal man—faulty, but more lovable
+in his faultiness than even the perfect Arthur. Yet what woman
+would not wish—ay, even the guilty one grovelling at his feet—to
+be Arthur’s wife?</p>
+
+<p>She read slowly, pondering every word, for that fair young
+Saxon was to her a very real personage—a being whose sorrows
+gave her absolute pain as she read. Time had been when she
+could not read Elaine’s story without tears, but to-day her eyes
+were dry, even to the last, when her fancy saw the barge gliding
+silently down the stream, with the fair dead face looking up to
+the sky, and the waxen hands meekly folded above the heart that
+had broken for love of Launcelot.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder how long his sorrow lasted,’ she thought, as she
+closed the book; and then she clasped her hands above the fair
+head resting against the rugged bark of the oak, and gave herself
+up to day-dreams, and let the afternoon wear on as it might, in
+placid enjoyment of the atmosphere and the landscape.</p>
+
+<p>Charlecote church clock had struck five when she plucked
+herself out of dreamland with an effort, unstrapped her dog from
+the tree, took up her empty basket, and started on the journey
+home. She had ample leisure for her walk. Dinner was not to
+be until half-past eight, and Sir Vernon and his daughter were
+hardly likely to be back till dinner-time.</p>
+
+<p>It was a stately feast to which they had been bidden—a feast
+in honour of somebody’s coming of age: a champagne breakfast<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</span>
+for the quality, roasted oxen and strong ale for the commonalty,
+speechifying, military bands—an altogether ponderous entertainment.
+Sir Vernon had groaned over the inevitable weariness of
+the affair in advance, and had talked of himself as a martyr to
+neighbourly feeling.</p>
+
+<p>The homeward walk in the quiet afternoon light was delicious.
+Goldie, released from his strap directly they left Charlecote, ran
+and leapt like a creature possessed. Oh, how he enjoyed
+himself with the first herd they came to, scampering after innocent
+milch-cows, and endangering his life by flying at the foreheads
+of horned oxen! Daphne let him do as he liked. She
+wandered out of her way a little to follow the windings of her
+beloved river. It was between seven and eight when she despatched
+Goldie to his stable-yard, and went into the cool shady
+hall, where two old orange-trees in great green crockery tubs
+scented the air.</p>
+
+<p>The butler met her on her way to the morning-room.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, if you please, Miss Daphne, Mr. Goring has arrived, and
+would like to see you before you dress for dinner. He was so
+disappointed at finding Miss Lawford away from home, and he
+would like to have a talk with you.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at the tumbled white gown—it was the same
+she had worn last year at Fontainebleau—and thought of her
+towzled hair. ‘I am so shamefully untidy,’ she said; ‘I think I
+had better dress first, Brooks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, don’t, Miss Daphne. You look nice enough, I’m
+sure. And I daresay Mr. Goring is impatient to hear all about
+Miss Lawford, or he wouldn’t have asked so particular to see
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not. No; perhaps he won’t notice my untidiness.
+I’ll risk it. Yet first impressions——I don’t want him
+to think me an underbred school-girl,’ muttered Daphne as she
+opened the drawing-room door.</p>
+
+<p>The room was large, and full of flowers and objects that
+broke the view; and all the glow and glory of a summer sunset
+was shining in at the wide west window.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment or so Daphne could see no one; the room
+seemed empty of humanity. There was the American squirrel
+revolving in his big airy cage; there lay Fluff, the Maltese
+terrier, curled into a silky ball in a corner of the sofa; and that
+seemed all. But as Daphne went timidly towards the window,
+a figure rose from a low chair, a face turned to meet her.</p>
+
+<p>She lifted her clasped hands to her breast with a startled cry.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nero!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poppæa!’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘OF COLOUR PALE AND DEAD WAS SHE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">‘And</span> so you are Daphne?’ said Mr. Goring, taking both her
+hands, and looking at her with an amused smile, not without
+tender admiration of the fair pale face and widely-opened blue
+eyes. Months afterwards he remembered the scared look in
+those lovely eyes, the death-like pallor of the complexion; but
+just now he ascribed Daphne’s evident agitation to a school-girl’s
+natural discomfiture at being found out in a risky escapade.</p>
+
+<p>‘And so you are Daphne?’ he repeated. ‘Why, you told me
+your father was a grocer in Oxford Street. Was not that what
+school-boys call a crumper?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Daphne, recovering herself, and a sparkle of mischief
+lighting up her eyes; ‘it was strictly true—of Martha
+Dibb’s father.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you adopted your friend’s parent for the nonce; a
+thoroughly Roman custom that of adoption, and in harmony
+with your Roman name. By the way, were you christened
+Poppæa Daphne, or Daphne Poppæa?’</p>
+
+<p>He had been amusing himself with the squirrel for the last
+half-hour; but he found Daphne’s embarrassment ever so much
+more amusing than the squirrel. He felt no more seriously
+about the one than about the other.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘you must have known quite
+well from the first moment that my name wasn’t Poppæa, just
+as well as I knew that yours wasn’t Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I had a shrewd suspicion that you were romancing
+about the name; but I swallowed the grocer. That was too bad
+of you. Do you know that you made me quite unhappy? I
+was miserable at the idea that such a girl as you could be allied
+with grocery. A ridiculous prejudice, was it not, in a man whose
+father began life as a day-labourer?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had sunk into a low chair by the squirrel’s cage, and
+was feeding that pampered favourite with the green points of
+some choice conifer. She seemed more taken up by his movements
+than by her future brother-in-law. Her agitation had
+passed, yet she was pale still, only the faintest bloom in her fair
+cheek, the pink of a wild rose.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t tell Lina,’ she pleaded, with her eyes on the
+squirrel.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, she doesn’t know anything about it then?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not a word. I dared not tell her. When I tried to do so,
+I became suddenly aware how horridly I had behaved. Martha
+Dibb and I were silly, thoughtless creatures, acting on the
+impulse of the moment.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think there was much impulse about Miss Dibb,’
+said Mr. Goring. ‘It seemed to me that she only looked on.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is disgustingly mean of you to say that!’ exclaimed
+Daphne, recurring to her school-girl phraseology, which she had
+somewhat modified at South Hill.</p>
+
+<p>‘Forgive me. And I must really hold my tongue about our
+delicious picnics? Of course I shall obey you, little one. But I
+hate secrets, and am a bad hand at keeping them. I shall never
+forget those two happy days at Fontainebleau. How strange
+that you and I, who were destined to become brother and sister,
+should make each other’s acquaintance in that haphazard, informal
+fashion! It seemed almost as if we were fated to meet,
+didn’t it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was that the fate you read in my hand?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ he answered, suddenly grave; ‘that was not what I
+read. Pshaw,’ he added in a lighter tone, ‘chiromancy is all
+nonsense. Why should a man, not too much given to belief in
+the things that are good for him to believe, pin his faith on a
+fanciful science of that kind? I have left off looking at palms
+ever since that day at Fontainebleau. And now tell me about
+your sister. I am longing to see her. To think that I should
+have stumbled on just the one particular afternoon on which she
+was to be so long away! I pictured her sitting by yonder bamboo
+table, like Penelope waiting for her Odysseus. Do you know
+that I have come straight through from Bergen without stopping?’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you have not been home to your Abbey?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My Abbey will keep. By-the-by, how is the place looking—the
+gardens all in their beauty, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have never seen it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never! Why, I thought Lina would be driving over once
+or twice a week to survey her future domain. I take it positively
+unkind that you have never seen my Abbey: my cloisters
+where never monk walked; my refectory, where never monk
+ate; my chapel, where no priest ever said mass. I should have
+thought curiosity would have impelled you to go and look at
+Goring Abbey. It is such a charming anomaly. But it pleased
+my poor father to build it, so I must not complain.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think you ought to be very proud of it when you consider
+how hard your father must have worked for the money it cost,’
+said Daphne bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, John Giles had to put a long career of honest labour
+behind him, before he became Giles-Goring and owner of
+Goring Abbey. He was a good old man. I feel sorry sometimes
+that I am not more like him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina says you are like your mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I believe I resemble her side of the house. It was
+by no means the more meritorious side, for the Heronvilles<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</span>
+were always loose fish, while my father was one of the best
+men who ever wore shoe-leather. Do you think Lina will be
+pleasantly surprised by my return?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do I think it?’ echoed Daphne. ‘Why, she has been
+longing for your coming—counting every hour. I know that,
+though she has not said as much. I can read her thoughts.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Clever little puss. Daphne, do you know I am quite
+delighted to find that my grocer’s daughter of Fontainebleau
+Forest is to be my new sister.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very good,’ returned Daphne rather stiffly. ‘It is
+eight o’clock, so I think, if you’ll excuse me, I had better go
+and dress for dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Wait till your people come home. I’ve ever so many
+questions to ask.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There is the carriage! You can ask them of Lina herself.’</p>
+
+<p>She ran out of the room by the glass door leading into the
+conservatory, leaving Mr. Goring to meet his betrothed at the
+opposite door. She ran through the conservatory to the garden.
+The sun was sinking in a sea of many-coloured clouds, yonder
+on the edge of the hills, and the river at the bottom of the
+valley ran between the rushes like liquid gold. Daphne stood
+on the sloping lawn staring at the light like a bewildered
+creature.</p>
+
+<p>She stood thus for some minutes motionless, with clasped
+hands, gazing at the sunset. Then she turned and walked
+slowly back to the house. There was no one to watch her,
+no one to think of her at this moment. Gerald and Lina were
+together in the drawing-room, steeped in the rapture of reunion.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me be rational, let me be reasonable, if I can,’ Daphne
+said to herself. She re-entered the house by an obscure door
+at the east end, and went up to her own room. There, in the
+soft evening light, she cast herself upon her knees by the bed,
+and prayed: prayed with all the fervour of her untried soul,
+prayed that she might be kept from temptation and led to do
+the thing that was right. Prayer so earnest in a nature so light
+and reckless was a new experience. She rose from her knees
+like a new creature, and fancied she had plucked the evil weed
+of a fatal fancy out of her heart. She moved about her room
+calmly and quietly, dressed herself carefully, and went back to
+the drawing-room, two minutes before the half-hour, radiant
+and smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline was still in the gown she had worn at the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">déjeuner</i>.
+She had taken off her hat, and that was all, too happy in her
+lover’s company to spare five minutes for the revision of her
+toilet. Gerald had done nothing to improve his travelling attire.
+Even the dust of the long railroad journey from Hull was still
+upon his clothes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Gerald tells me that you and he have made friends already,
+Daphne,’ said Lina in a happy voice.</p>
+
+<p>She was standing by her lover’s side in front of the open
+window, while Sir Vernon sat in an easy-chair devouring his
+<cite>Times</cite>, and trying to make up for the lost hours since the post
+came in.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; Daphne and I have sworn eternal friendship,’ exclaimed
+Gerald gaily. ‘We mean to be a most devoted brother
+and sister. It was quite wonderful how quickly we broke the
+ice, and how thoroughly at home we became in a quarter of an
+hour.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne is not a very terrible personage,’ said Madoline,
+smiling at her sister’s bright young face. ‘Well, darling, had
+you a happy day all by yourself? I was almost glad you were
+not with us. The coming of age was a very tiresome business.
+I had ten times rather have been in our own gardens with
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The whole entertainment was ineffably dull,’ said Sir
+Vernon, without looking from his paper.</p>
+
+<p>And now the well-bred butler glided across the threshold,
+and gently insinuated that dinner was served, if it might be
+the pleasure of his people to come and eat it: whereupon Mr.
+Goring gave his arm to Madoline, and Sir Vernon for the first
+time since his younger daughter’s return felt himself constrained
+to escort her to the dining-room, or leave her to
+follow in his wake like a lap-dog.</p>
+
+<p>He deliberated for a moment or two as to which he should
+do, then made a hook of his elbow, and looked down at her
+dubiously, as much as to say that she might take it or leave it.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne would have much liked to refuse the proffered
+boon, but she was in a dutiful mood to-night, so she meekly
+slipped her little gloved hand under her parent’s sleeve, and
+walked by his side to the dining-room, where he let her hand
+drop directly they were inside the door.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone at South Hill hated a glare, so the dining-room,
+like the drawing-room, was lighted by moderator lamps under
+velvet shades. Two large brazen lamps with deep-fringed
+purple shades hung a little way above the table; two more
+lighted the sideboard. The French windows stood wide open,
+and across a balcony full of flowers appeared the shadowy landscape
+and the cool evening sky.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon was tired and out of spirits. He had very little
+to say about anything except the proceedings of the afternoon,
+and all his remarks upon the hospitalities at which he had
+assisted were of an abusive character. He could eat no dinner,
+his internal economy having been thrown altogether out of
+gear by the barbarity of a solid meal at three o’clock. His
+discontent would have effectually damped the spirits of any<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</span>
+human beings except lovers. Those privileged beings inhabit
+a world of their own; so Madoline and Gerald smiled at each
+other, and talked to each other across the roses and lilies that
+beautified the dinner-table, and seemed unconscious that anything
+unpleasant was going on.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne watched them thoughtfully. How lovely her sister
+looked in the new light of this perfect happiness—how unaffectedly
+she revealed her delight at her lover’s return!</p>
+
+<p>‘How good it was of you to come back a month sooner than
+you had promised, Gerald!’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear girl, I have been pining to come home for the
+last six months, but, as you and your father and I had chalked
+out a certain portion of Europe which I was to travel over, I
+thought I ought to go through with it; but if you knew how
+heartily sick I am of going from pillar to post, of craning my
+neck to look at the roofs of churches, and dancing attendance
+upon grubby old sacristans, and riding up narrow pathways on
+mules, and having myself and my luggage registered through
+from the bustling commercial city I am sick of to loathing after
+twenty-four hours’ experience, to the sleepy mediæval town
+which I inevitably tire of in ten, you would be able to understand
+my delight in coming back to you and placid Warwickshire.
+By-the-by, why didn’t you take Daphne to see the
+Abbey? She tells me she has never been over to Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should have had no pleasure in showing her your house’—‘Our
+house,’ interjected Gerald—‘while you were away.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, dearest, it was a loving fancy, so I won’t scold you
+for it. We’ll have a——’ He paused for an instant, looking
+at Daphne with a mischievous smile. ‘We’ll have a picnic
+there to-morrow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why a picnic?’ grumbled Sir Vernon. ‘I can understand
+people eating out of doors when they have no house to shelter
+them, but nobody but an idiot would squat on the grass to dine
+if he could get at chairs and tables. Look at your gipsies and
+hawkers now—you seldom catch them picnicking. If their tent
+or their caravan is ever so small and stuffy they generally feed
+inside it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind the hawkers,’ exclaimed Gerald contemptuously.
+‘A fig for commonsense. Of course, everybody in his
+senses knows that such a dinner as this is much more comfortable
+than the most perfect picnic that ever was organised. But,
+for all that, I adore picnics; and we’ll have one to-morrow,
+won’t we, Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>He looked across the table at her in the subdued lamplight,
+smiling, and expecting to see a responsive smile in her eyes; but
+she was preternaturally grave.</p>
+
+<p>‘Just as you like,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Just as I like! What a chilling repulse! Why, unless<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</span>
+Madoline and you approve of the idea, I don’t care a straw for
+it. I’ll punish you for your indifference, Miss Daphne. You
+shall have a formal luncheon in the refectory, at a table large
+enough for thirty, and groaning under my father’s family plate—Garrard’s,
+of the reign of Victoria, strictly ponderous and
+utilitarian. What a lovely light there is in the western sky!’
+said Gerald, as Madoline and her sister rose from the table.
+‘Shall we all walk down to the river, before we join Sir Vernon
+in the billiard-room? You’d like to try your hand against me,
+sir, I suppose, now that I come fresh from benighted lands where
+the tables have no pockets.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I’ll play a game with you presently.’</p>
+
+<p>Gerald and the two girls went into the verandah, and thence
+by a flight of shallow steps to the lawn. It was a peerless night
+after a peerless day. A young moon was shining above the
+topmost branches of the deodaras, and touching the Avon with
+patches of silvery light. The scene was lovely, the atmosphere
+delicious, but Daphne felt that she was one too many, though
+Madoline had linked an arm through hers. Those two had so
+much to talk about, so many questions to ask each other.</p>
+
+<p>‘And you have really come home for good,’ said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘For good, dearest; for the brightest fate that can befall a
+man, to marry the woman he loves and settle down to a peaceful
+placid life in the home of his—ancestor. I have been a
+rover quite long enough, and I shall rove no more, except at
+your command.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There are places I should love to visit with you, Gerald—Switzerland,
+Italy, the Tyrol.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We will go wherever you please, dearest. It will be delightful
+to me to show you all that is fairest on this earth, and
+to hear you say, when we are hunting vainly for some undiscovered
+nook, where we may escape from the tourist herd—“After
+all, there is no place like home.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall only be too much inclined to say that. I love our
+own country, and the scenery I have known all my life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We must start early to-morrow, Lina. We have a great
+deal of business to get through at the Abbey.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Business!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, dear; I want you to give me your ideas about the
+building of new hot-houses. With your passion for flowers the
+present amount of glass will never be enough. What do you
+say to sending MacCloskie over to meet us there? His opinion
+as a practical man might be of use.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If Mr. MacCloskie is going to picnic with you I’ll stay at
+home,’ said Daphne.’ I admire the gentleman as a gardener,
+but I detest him as a human being.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be frightened, Daphne,’ said Gerald, laughing. ‘It is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</span>
+a levelling age, but we have not yet come to picnicking with our
+gardeners.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. MacCloskie is such a very superior person,’ retorted
+Daphne, ‘I don’t know what he might expect.’</p>
+
+<p>They had strolled down to the meadow by the river, a long
+stretch of level pasture, richly timbered, divided from the gardens
+by a ha-ha, over which there was a light iron bridge. They
+lingered for a little while by this bridge, looking across at the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know that Daphne has started a boat,’ said Madoline,
+‘and has become very expert with a pair of sculls? She
+rowed me down to Stratford the day before yesterday, and back
+against the stream.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed! I congratulate you on a delightful accomplishment,
+Daphne. I don’t see why girls should not have their
+pleasure out of the river as well as boys. I’ve a brilliant idea.
+The Abbey is only five miles up the stream. Suppose we charter
+Daphne’s boat for to-morrow. I can pull a pretty good stroke,
+and the distance will be easy between us two. Will your boat
+hold three of us comfortably, do you think, Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It would hold six.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then consider your services retained for to-morrow. I
+shall enjoy the miniature prettiness of the Avon, after the
+mightier streams I have been upon lately.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t suppose Lina would like it,’ faltered Daphne, not
+appearing elated at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina would like it immensely,’ said her sister. ‘I shall feel
+so safe if you are with us, Gerald. What a strange girl you are,
+Daphne! A week ago you were eager to carry me to the end of
+the world in your boat.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You can have the boat, of course, if you like, and I’ll pull
+if you want me,’ returned Daphne, somewhat ungraciously;
+‘but I think you’ll find five miles of the Avon rather a monotonous
+business. It is a very lovely river if you take it in sections,
+but as both banks present a succession of green fields and
+pollard willows, it is just possible for the human mind to tire
+of it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, you are an absolute cynic—and at seventeen!’ exclaimed
+Gerald, with pretended horror. ‘What will you be by
+the time you are forty?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If I am alive I daresay I shall be a very horrid old woman,’
+said Daphne. ‘Perhaps something after the pattern of Aunt
+Rhoda. I can’t conceive anything much worse than that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Papa will be waiting for his game of billiards,’ said Lina.
+‘We had better hurry back to the house.’</p>
+
+<p>They were met on the threshold of the conservatory by Mrs.
+Ferrers. That lady had a wonderful knack of getting acquainted
+with everything that happened at South Hill. If there had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</span>
+been a semaphore on the roof she could hardly have known
+things sooner.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Gerald, what a delightful surprise you have given
+us!’ she exclaimed. ‘I put on my hat the instant the Rector
+had said grace. I left him to drink his claret alone—a thing
+that has not happened since we were married—and walked over
+to bid you welcome. How well you are looking! How very
+brown you have grown: I am so glad to see you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was very good of you to come over on purpose, Mrs.
+Ferrers.’</p>
+
+<p>‘May I not be Aunt Rhoda instead of Mrs. Ferrers? I
+should like it ever so much better. Next year I shall be really
+your aunt, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And the Rector will be your uncle,’ said Daphne pertly.
+‘He is mine already, and he is ever so much kinder than when I
+was only his parishioner.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers shot a piercing look, half-angry, half-interrogative,
+at her younger niece. The Rector had shown a reprehensible
+tendency to praise the girl’s beauty, had on one occasion
+gone so far as to offer her a patriarchal kiss, from which Daphne
+had recoiled involuntarily, saying afterwards to her sister that
+‘one must draw the line somewhere.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Vernon has gone to bed,’ said Aunt Rhoda; ‘he felt
+thoroughly wearied out after the gathering at Holmsley, which
+seems from his account to have been a very dull business. I am
+glad the Rector and I declined. A cold luncheon is positive
+death to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then we needn’t go indoors yet awhile,’ said Gerald. ‘It
+is lovely out here. Shall I fetch a wrap for you, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers was carefully draped in her China-crape shawl,
+one of Madoline’s wedding gifts to her aunt, and costly enough
+for a royal present.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks. There is a shawl on a sofa in the drawing-room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let Daphne fetch it,’ interjected Mrs. Ferrers; and her
+niece flew to obey, while the other three sauntered slowly along
+the broad terrace in front of the windows.</p>
+
+<p>There were some light iron chairs and a table at one end of
+the walk, and here they seated themselves to enjoy the summer
+night.</p>
+
+<p>‘As our English summer is a matter of about five weeks,
+broken by a good deal of storm and rain, we ought to make the
+most of it,’ remarked Gerald. ‘I hope we shall have a fine day
+for the Abbey to-morrow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are going to take Lina to the Abbey?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, for a regular businesslike inspection; that we may see
+what will have to be improved or altered, or added or done
+away with before next year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How interesting! I should like so much to drive over<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</span>
+with you. My experience in housekeeping matters might possibly
+be of use.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Invaluable, no doubt,’ answered Gerald, with his easy-going,
+half-listless air; ‘but we must postpone that advantage until
+the next time. We are going in Daphne’s boat, which will only
+comfortably hold three,’ said Gerald, with a calm contempt for
+actual truth which horrified Madoline, who was rigidly truthful
+even in the most trivial things.</p>
+
+<p>‘Going in Daphne’s boat! What an absurd idea!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda, for it’s my idea,’ remonstrated
+Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘But I can’t help saying it. When you have half-a-dozen
+carriages at your disposal, and when the drive to Goring is
+absolutely lovely, to go in a horrid little boat.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a very nice boat, Aunt Rhoda, and Daphne manages it
+capitally,’ said Lina.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it will be a delightfully dreamy way of going,’ said
+Gerald. ‘We shall take our time about it. There is no reason
+we should hurry. I shall order a carriage to meet us at the
+bottom of Goring Lane, where we shall land. If we prefer to
+drive home we can do so.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Gerald, you and Madoline are the best judges of
+what is agreeable to yourselves; but I cannot help thinking
+that you are encouraging Daphne in a most unbecoming pursuit.’</p>
+
+<p>The appearance of Daphne herself with the shawl put a stop
+to the argument. She folded the soft woollen wrap round her
+sister, and then stopped to kiss her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-night, Lina,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Going to bed so early, Daphne? I hope you are not ill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only a little tired after my rambles. Good-night, Aunt
+Rhoda; good-night, Mr. Goring,’ and Daphne ran away.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aunt Rhoda might drive over and meet us at Goring,
+Gerald,’ suggested Madoline, who was always thoughtful of
+other people’s pleasure and did not wish her aunt to fancy herself
+ignored.</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly. I shall be charmed, if you think it worth your
+while,’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I shall certainly come. My ponies want exercise,
+and to-morrow is one of the Rector’s parochial days, so he won’t
+miss me for an hour or two. What time do you contemplate
+arriving at the Abbey?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I suppose between one and two, the orthodox luncheon-hour,’
+answered Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was up and dressed before five o’clock next morning.
+She had set her little American alarum-clock for five; but that
+had been a needless precaution, since she had not slept above
+a quarter of an hour at a time all through the short summer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</span>
+night. She had seen the last glimmer of the fading moon, the
+first faint glow of sunlight flickering on her wall. She stole
+softly downstairs, unlocked doors and drew bolts with the
+silent dexterity of a professional housebreaker, feeling almost
+as guilty as if she had been one; and in the cool quiet morning,
+while all the world beside herself seemed asleep, she ran lightly
+across the dewy lawn, down to the iron bridge by which she
+had stood with Madoline and Gerald last night. Then she
+crossed the meadow, wading ankle-deep in wet grass, and scaring
+the placid kine, and thus to the boat-house.</p>
+
+<p>She went in and got into her boat, which was drawn up
+under cover, and carefully protected by linen clothing. She
+whisked the covering off, and seated herself on the floor of the
+boat in front of the place of honour, above which appeared the
+name of the craft, in gilded letters on the polished pine—‘Nero.’</p>
+
+<p>She took out her penknife and began carefully, laboriously,
+to scrape away the gilt lettering. The thing had been so conscientiously
+done, the letters were so sunk and branded into the
+wood, that the task seemed endless; she was still digging and
+scraping at the first letter when Arden church clock struck
+six, every stroke floating clear and sweet across the river.</p>
+
+<p>‘What—an—utter—idiot I was!’ she said to herself, in an
+exasperated tone, emphasising each word with a savage dig of
+her knife into the gilded wood. ‘And how shall I ever get all
+these letters out before breakfast time?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why attempt it?’ asked a low pleasant voice close at hand,
+and Daphne, becoming suddenly aware of the odour of tobacco
+mixed with the perfumes of a summer meadow, looked up and
+saw Gerald Goring lounging against the door-post, smoking a
+cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why erase the name?’ he asked. ‘It is a very good name—classical,
+historical, and not altogether inappropriate. Nero
+was a boat-builder himself, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was he?’ said Daphne, sitting limply in the bottom of her
+boat, completely unnerved.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; the vessel he built was a failure, or at any rate the
+result of his experiment was unsatisfactory, but the intention
+was original, and deserves praise. I am sorry you have spoilt
+the first letter of his name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t distress yourself,’ exclaimed Daphne, jumping up and
+stepping briskly out of her boat. ‘I am going to change the
+name of my boat, and I thought I could do it this morning as a
+surprise for Lina; but it was a more difficult business than I
+supposed. And now I must run home as fast as I can, and
+make myself tidy for breakfast. My father is the essence of
+punctuality.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But as half-past eight is his breakfast hour you need not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</span>
+be in a desperate hurry. It has only just struck six. Will you
+come for a stroll?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, thank you. I have ever so much to do before breakfast.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Czerny’s “Studies of Velocity”?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No.’</p>
+
+<p>‘French grammar?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Be sure you are ready to start directly after breakfast.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne scampered off through the wet grass, leaving Mr.
+Goring standing by the boat-house door, looking down with an
+amused smile at the mutilated name.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND SPENDING SILVER HAD HE RIGHT YNOW.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">At</span> ten o’clock Daphne was down at the boat-house again,
+ready for the aquatic excursion, looking as fresh and bright as
+if nothing had ever occurred to vex her. She wore a workmanlike
+attire of indigo serge—no gay fluttering scarlet ribbons this
+time. Her whole costume was studiously plain, from the sailor
+hat to the stout Cromwell shoe and dark blue stocking, the
+wash-leather glove and leathern belt with a broad steel buckle.
+Madoline’s flowing muslin skirts and flowery hat contrasted
+charmingly with her sister’s more masculine attire.</p>
+
+<p>‘This looks like business,’ said Gerald, as Bink ran the boat
+into the water, and held her while the ladies stepped on board.
+‘Now, Daphne, whichever of us gets tired first must forfeit a
+dozen pairs of gloves.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it will be you, from the look of you,’ returned
+Daphne, as she rolled up her sleeves and took hold of an oar in
+an off-hand waterman-like manner. ‘When you are tired I’ll
+take the sculls.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, you see I am likely to be in very bad form. It is
+four years since I rowed in the ‘Varsity race.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What, you rowed in the great race? What affectation to
+talk about being in bad form. I should think a man could
+never forget training of that kind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He can never forget the theory, but he may feel the want
+of practice. However, I fancy I shall survive till we get to
+Goring Lane, and that you’ll win no gloves to-day. I suppose
+you never wear anything less than twelve buttons?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Madoline gives me plenty of gloves, thank you,’ replied
+Daphne with dignity. ‘My glove-box is not supported by
+voluntary contributions.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, do you know that for a young woman who is
+speedily to become my sister you are barely civil?’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘I beg your pardon, I am practising a sisterly manner. I
+never met with a brother and sister yet who were particularly
+civil to each other.’</p>
+
+<p>They were rowing quietly up the stream, lowering their
+heads now and then to clear the drooping tresses of a willow.
+The verdant banks, the perpetual willows, were beautiful, but
+with a monotonous beauty. It was the ripe middle of the year,
+when all things are of one rich green—meadows and woods and
+hills—and in a country chiefly pastoral there must needs be a
+touch of sameness in the landscape. Here and there a spire
+showed above the trees, or a gray stone mansion stood boldly
+out upon the green hillside.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had so arranged cushions and wraps upon the
+principal seat as to conceal the mutilated name. Gerald rowed
+stroke, she sat in the bows, and Madoline reclined luxuriously
+in the stern with the Maltese terrier Fluff in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>‘If we are lucky we shall be at the Abbey an hour and a
+half before your aunt and her ponies,’ said Gerald. ‘It was
+extremely obliging of her to volunteer the inestimable boon of
+her advice, but I fancy we should get on quite as well without
+her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It would have been unkind to let her think we didn’t want
+her,’ said Madoline deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘That is so like you, Lina; you will go through life putting
+up with people you don’t care about, rather than wound their
+feelings,’ said Gerald carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aunt Rhoda is my father’s only sister. I am bound to
+respect her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ve no doubt the Old Man of the Sea was a very estimable
+person in the abstract,’ said Gerald, ‘but Sindbad shunted him
+at the first opportunity. Don’t look so distressed, dearest.
+Aunt Rhoda shall patronise us, and dictate to us all our lives,
+if it please you. By-the-by, what has become of your devoted
+slave and ally, Turchill? I expected to find him on the premises
+when I arrived at South Hill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He went up to London last week with his mother, to make
+a round of the theatres and picture-galleries. They will be
+home in a few days, I daresay.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder he can exist out of Warwickshire. He is so
+thoroughly bucolic, so permeated by the flavour of his native
+soil.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is very kind and good and true-hearted,’ protested
+Daphne, flushing indignantly; ‘and he is your old friend and
+kinsman. I wonder you can speak so contemptuously of him,
+Mr. Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What, my vixenish little Pop—Daphne,’ cried Gerald,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</span>
+colouring at this slip of the tongue, ‘is it thus the cat jumps?
+I would not underrate Edgar for worlds. He is out and away
+the best fellow I know; but, however much you may admire
+him, little one, that his mind is essentially bucolic is a fact—and
+facts are stubborn things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have no right to say that I admire him. I respect
+and esteem him, and I am not ashamed to own as much,
+though you may think it a reason for laughing at me,’ retorted
+Daphne, still angry. ‘He taught me to row this very boat.
+He used to get up every morning at a ridiculously early hour,
+in order to be at South Hill in time to give me a lesson before
+breakfast.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A man might do twice as much for your <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">beaux yeux</i>, and
+yet deem it no self-sacrifice.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t,’ cried Daphne. ‘Didn’t I tell you ages ago that I
+detest you when you flatter me?’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline looked up with momentary wonder at that expression
+‘ages ago;’ but Daphne was so given to wild exaggerations
+and a school-girl latitude of phrase, that ‘ages ago’ might
+naturally mean yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne dearest, what has put you out of temper?’ she
+asked gently. ‘I’m afraid you’re getting tired.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If she give in before we get to Goring Lane I shall claim
+a dozen pairs of gloves.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not the least little bit tired; I could row you to
+Naseby, if you liked,’ replied Daphne haughtily; whereupon
+the lovers began to talk of their own affairs, somewhat lazily,
+as suited the summer morning and the quiet landscape, where a
+light haze that yet lingered over the fields seemed the cool and
+misty forecast of a blazing afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Goring Lane was an accommodation road, leading down from
+the home farm to the meadows on the river bank, and here they
+found a light open carriage and a pair of strong country-made
+gray horses waiting for them.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald had sent his valet over before breakfast to make
+all arrangements for their reception. The man was waiting
+beside the carriage, and to Daphne’s horror she beheld in him
+the grave gentleman in gray who had helped to convey provisions
+for the Fontainebleau picnic: but not a muscle of the
+valet’s face betrayed the fact that he had ever seen this young
+lady before.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the lane they came into a shady park-like
+avenue, and then to a gray stone gateway, pillared, mediæval,
+grandiose; on the summit of each granite pillar a griffin of the
+most correct heraldic make grasped a shield, and on the shield
+were quarterings that hinted at a palmer’s pilgrimage in the
+Holy Land, and a ragged staff that suggested kindred with the
+historic race of Dudley.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</span></p>
+
+<p>The lodge-keeper’s wife and her three children were standing
+by the open gate, ready to duck profusely in significance of
+delight in their lord’s return. The male bird as usual was
+absent from the nest. Nobody ever saw a man at an entrance
+lodge.</p>
+
+<p>The avenue of limes was of but thirty years’ growth, but
+there was plenty of good old timber on the broad expanse of
+meadow-land which Mr. Goring had converted into a park.
+There was a broad blue lake in the distance, created by the
+late Mr. Goring, an island in the middle of it, also of his creation;
+while a fleet of rare and costly foreign aquatic birds of
+Mr. Goring’s importation were sailing calmly on the calm water.
+And yonder, in the green valley, with a wooded amphitheatre
+behind it, stood the Abbey, built strictly after the fashion of
+the fifteenth century, but every block of stone and every lattice
+obviously of yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>‘It wouldn’t be half a bad place if it would only mellow
+down to a sober grayness, instead of being so uncomfortably
+white and dazzling,’ said Gerald as they drew near the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is positively lovely,’ answered Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>She was looking at the gardens, which thirty years of care
+and outlay had made about as perfect as gardens of the Italian
+style can be. They were not such old English gardens as Lord
+Bacon wrote about. There was nothing wild, no intricate
+shrubberies, no scope for the imagination, as there was at South
+Hill. All was planned and filled in with a Dutch neatness.
+The parterres were laid out in blocks, and in the centre of each
+rose a fountain from a polished marble basin. Statues by
+sculptors of note were placed here and there against a background
+of tall orange-trees, arbutus, or yew. Everything was
+on a large scale, which suited this palatial Italian manner.
+Such a garden might have fitly framed the palace of a Medici
+or a Borgia; nay, in such a garden might Horace have walked
+by the side of Mæcenas, or Virgil recited a portion of his
+Æneid to Augustus and Octavia. There was a dignity, a splendour,
+in these parterres which Daphne thought finer than
+anything she had seen even at Versailles, whither Madame
+Tolmache had escorted her English pupils on a certain summer
+holiday.</p>
+
+<p>‘The rose-garden will please you better than this formal
+pleasaunce, I daresay,’ said Gerald. ‘It is on the other side of
+the house, and consists wholly of grass walks and rose-trees.
+My dear mother gave her whole mind to the cultivation and
+improvement of her gardens. I believe she was rather extravagant
+in this one matter—at least, I have heard my father say
+so. But I think the result justified her outlay.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And yet you want to build more hot-houses on my account,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</span>
+Gerald. Surely arrangements that satisfied Lady Geraldine will
+be good enough for me,’ said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, one ought to go on improving. Besides, you are fonder
+of exotics than my mother was. And the rage for church decoration
+is getting stronger every day. You will have plenty
+of use for your hot-houses. And now we will go and take a
+sketchy survey of the house, before we interview the worthy
+MacCloskie. Has Miss Lawford’s gardener arrived?’ Gerald
+asked of the gentleman in gray, who had occupied the box-seat,
+and was again in attendance at the carriage-door, while a portly
+butler and a powdered footman, both of the true English
+pattern, waited in the Gothic porch.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, sir; Mr. MacCloskie is in the housekeeper’s room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope they have given him luncheon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, sir, thank you, sir. He would take nothing but a
+glass of claret and a cigar. He has taken a stroll round the
+gardens, sir, so as to be prepared to give an opinion.’</p>
+
+<p>The house was deliciously cool, almost as if ice had been
+laid on in the pipes which were used in winter for hot water.
+The hall was as profoundly Gothic as that at Penshurst—it was
+difficult to believe that the reek of a log fire piled in the middle
+of the stone floor had never gone up through yonder rafters, that
+the rude vassals of a feudal lord had never squatted by the
+blaze, or slept on yonder ponderous oaken settles. Nothing was
+wanting that should have been there to tell of an ancient ancestry.
+Armour that had been battered and dented at Cressy or
+Bannockburn, or at any rate most skilfully manipulated at Birmingham,
+adorned the walls. Banners drooped from the rafters;
+heads of noble stags that had been shot in Arden’s primeval
+wood, spears and battle-axes that had been used in the Crusades,
+and collected in Wardour Street, gave variety to the artistic
+decoration of the walls, while tapestry of undoubted antiquity
+hung before the doorways.</p>
+
+<p>These things had given pleasure to Mr. Giles-Goring, but
+to his son they were absolutely obnoxious. Yet the father had
+been so good a father, and had done such honest and useful
+work in the world before he began to amass this trumpery, that
+the son had not the heart to dislodge anything.</p>
+
+<p>They went through room after room—all richly furnished,
+all strictly mediæval: old oak carving collected in the Low
+Countries; cabinets that reached from floor to ceiling; sideboards
+large enough to barricade a Parisian boulevard; all the
+legends of Holy Writ exemplified by the patient Fleming’s chisel;
+polished oaken floors; panelled walls. The only modern rooms
+were those at one end of the Abbey, which had been refurnished
+by Lady Geraldine during her widowhood, and here there was
+all the lightness and grace of modern upholstery of the highest
+order. Satinwood furniture and pale-tinted draperies; choice<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</span>
+water-colours and choicer porcelain on the walls; books in every
+available nook.</p>
+
+<p>‘How lovely!’ cried Daphne, who had not been impressed
+by the modern mediævalism of the other rooms. ‘This is where
+I should like to live.’</p>
+
+<p>Lady Geraldine’s morning-room looked into the rose-garden.
+She had not been able to do away with the mullioned windows,
+but a little glass door—an anachronism, but vastly convenient—had
+been squeezed into a corner to give her easy access to her
+favourite garden.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline looked at everything with tender regard. Lady
+Geraldine had been fond of her and kind to her, and had most
+heartily approved her son’s choice. Tears dimmed Lina’s sight
+as she looked at the familiar room, which seemed so empty without
+the gracious figure of its mistress.</p>
+
+<p>‘I fancied you would like to occupy these rooms by-and-by,
+Lina,’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like it of all things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And can you suggest any alterations—any improvements?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gerald, do you think that I would change a thing that your
+mother cared for? The rooms are lovely in themselves; but
+were they ever so old-fashioned or shabby, I should like them
+best as your mother left them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina, you are simply perfect!’ exclaimed Gerald tenderly.
+‘You are just the one faultless woman I have ever met. Chaucer’s
+Grisel was not a diviner creature.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you are not going to try my sister as that horrid man
+in the story tried Grisel,’ cried Daphne, bristling with indignation.
+‘I only wish I had lived in those days, and had the reversion
+of Count Walter, as a widower. I’d have made him repent
+his brutality.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have no doubt you would have proved skilful in the art of
+husband-government,’ said Gerald. ‘But you needn’t be alarmed.
+Much as I admire Grisel I shan’t try to emulate her husband.
+I could not leave my wife in agony, and walk away smiling at
+the cleverness of my practical joke. Well, Lina, then it is settled
+that in these rooms there is to be no alteration,’ he added,
+turning to Madoline, who had been taking up the volumes on a
+little ebony bookstand and looking at their titles.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please make no alteration anywhere. Let the house be as
+your father and mother arranged it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My sweet conservative! And we are to keep all the old
+servants, I conclude. They are all of my father’s and mother’s
+choosing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Pray keep them all. If you could any way find room for
+MacCloskie, without offending your head gardener——’</p>
+
+<p>‘MacCloskie shall be superintendent of your own special hot-houses,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</span>
+my darling. It will be an easy, remunerative place—good
+wages and plenty of perquisites.’</p>
+
+<p>A grinding of wheels on the gravel, and a tremendous peal
+of the bell at the principal entrance proclaimed the advent of a
+visitor.</p>
+
+<p>‘Aunt Rhoda, no doubt,’ said Gerald. ‘Let us be sober.’</p>
+
+<p>They went back to the hall to greet the new arrival. It was
+Mrs. Ferrers’s youthful groom, a smart young gentleman of
+the tiger species, who had made that tremendous peal. Mrs.
+Ferrers’s roan ponies were scratching up the gravel; but Mrs.
+Ferrers was not alone; a gentleman had just dismounted from
+a fine upstanding bay, and that gentleman was Edgar Turchill.</p>
+
+<p>‘So glad to see you here, Aunt Rhoda,’ cried Gerald. ‘Why,
+Turchill, they told me you were in London!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Came home last night, rode over to South Hill this morning,
+overtook Mrs. Ferrers on the way, and——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I asked him to come on with me and to join in our round
+of inspection,’ said Aunt Rhoda. ‘I hope I did not do very
+wrong.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You did very right. I don’t think Turchill feels himself
+much of a stranger at the Abbey, even though it has been a very
+inhospitable place for the last year or so. And now before we
+go in for any more business let’s proceed to luncheon. Your
+boat has had a most invigorating effect on my appetite, Daphne.
+I’m simply famished.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So you came in Daphne’s boat. She rows pretty well,
+doesn’t she?’ asked Edgar, with a glance of mingled pride and
+tenderness at his pupil.</p>
+
+<p>‘She might win a cup to-morrow. You have reason to be
+proud of her.’</p>
+
+<p>They all went into the refectory, where, under the lofty
+open timber roof, a small oval table looked like an island in a
+sea of Turkey carpet and polished oak flooring.</p>
+
+<p>‘It would have served you right if we had had the long
+dinner-table,’ Gerald said to Daphne, as he passed her with Mrs.
+Ferrers on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought we were going to picnic in the park,’ said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne——Neither you nor Daphne seemed to care about
+it,’ replied Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘This is a great deal more sensible,’ remarked Mrs. Ferrers.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I don’t know; it’s awfully jolly to eat one’s luncheon
+under the trees in such weather as this,’ said Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘For Mr. Turchill’s particular gratification, we will have
+afternoon tea in the cloisters,’ said Gerald. ‘Blake,’ to the
+butler, ‘let there be tea at half-past four on the grass in the
+cloisters.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne could eat or drink very little, though Edgar, who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</span>
+sat next to her, was pressing in his offers of lobster mayonnaise,
+and cold chicken, cutlets, sole à la maître d’hôtel, Perigord pie.
+She was looking about her at the portraits on the walls.</p>
+
+<p>Facing her hung Prescott Knight’s picture of the man who
+began his career by wheeling barrows, and who ended it by
+building mighty viaducts, levelling hills, filling valleys, making
+the crooked paths straight. It was a brave honest English face,
+plain, rugged even, the painter having in no wise flattered his
+sitter; but a countenance that was pleasanter to the eye than
+many a handsome face. A countenance that promised truth and
+honour, manliness and warm feelings in its possessor.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked from the portrait on the wall to the present
+master of the Abbey. No; there was not one point of resemblance
+between Gerald Goring and his father.</p>
+
+<p>Then she looked at another portrait hanging in the place of
+honour above the wide Gothic mantelpiece. Lady Geraldine,
+by Buckner: the picture of an elegant high-bred woman of
+between thirty and forty, dressed in amber satin and black lace,
+one bare arm lifted to pluck a rose from a lattice, the other hand
+resting on a marble balustrade, across which an Indian shawl had
+been flung carelessly. Face and figure were both perfect after
+their kind—figure tall and willowy, a swan’s neck, a proud and
+pensive countenance, with eyes of the same doubtful colour as
+Gerald’s, the same dreamy look in them. Then Daphne turned
+her gaze to the other end of the room, where hung the famous
+Sir Peter Lely, a replica of the well-known picture in Hampton
+Court, for which replica Mr. Giles-Goring had paid a preposterous
+price to a poor and proud member of his wife’s family,
+who was lucky enough to possess it. Strange that a singleminded,
+honest-hearted man like John Giles-Goring should have
+been proud of his son’s descent from a king’s mistress, and should
+have hung the portrait of Felicia, Countess of Heronville, above
+the desk at which he read family prayers to his assembled household.
+Yes; Lady Heronville’s eyes were like Gerald’s, dreamily
+beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody at the table had plenty to say, except Daphne.
+She was absorbed by her contemplation of the pictures. Edgar
+was concerned at her want of appetite. He tried to entertain
+her by telling her of the plays and pictures he had seen.</p>
+
+<p>‘Your father ought to take you to town before the season is
+over. There is so much to see,’ he said; ‘and though I am told
+that all the West End tradespeople are complaining, it seems to
+me that London was never so full as this year. Hyde Park in
+the morning and afternoon is something wonderful.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like to go to the opera,’ said Daphne rather listlessly.
+‘Madame Tolmache took us to hear “Faust” one evening.
+She said that an occasional visit to the opera was the
+highest form of cultivation for the youthful mind. I believe<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</span>
+she had a box given her by the music-master, and that she
+turned it to her own advantage that way—charging it in her
+bills, don’t you know. I shall never forget that evening. It was
+at the end of August, and Paris was wrapped in a white mist,
+and the air had a breathless, suffocating feeling, and the streets
+smelt of over-ripe peaches. But when we got out of the jolting
+fly that took us from the station to the theatre, and went to a
+box that seemed in the clouds, we had to go up so many stairs
+to reach it, and the music began, and the curtain went up, it
+was like being in a new world. I felt as if I were holding my
+breath all the time. Even Martha Dibb—that stupid, good-natured
+girl I told you about—seemed spell-bound, and sat with
+her mouth open, gasping like a fish. Nilsson was Marguerite,
+and Faure was Mephistopheles. I shall remember them to the
+end of my life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll hear them again often, I hope. Nilsson was singing
+the other night, when I took my mother to hear Wagner’s great
+opera. The music is quite the rage, I believe; but I don’t like
+it as well as “Don Giovanni.”’</p>
+
+<p>Luncheon was over by this time—a formal ceremonious
+luncheon, such as Daphne detested. It was her punishment for
+having been uncivil last night when the picnic idea was mooted.
+And now they all repaired to the gardens, and perambulated the
+parterre, and criticised the statues: Leda with her swan, Venus
+with an infant Cupid, Hebe offering her cup, Ganymede on his
+eagle—all the most familiar personages in Lemprière. The
+fountains were sending up their rainbow spray in the blazing
+afternoon sun. The geraniums, and calceolarias, and pansies,
+and petunias, and all the tribe of begonias, and house-leeks,
+newly bedded out, seemed to quiver in the fierce bright light.</p>
+
+<p>‘For pity’s sake let us get out of this burning flowery furnace,’
+cried Gerald. ‘Let’s go to the rose-garden; it’s on the shady
+side of the house, and within reach of my mother’s favourite
+tulip-trees.’</p>
+
+<p>The rose-garden was a blessed refuge after that exposed parterre
+facing due south. Here there was velvet turf on which to
+walk, and here were trellised screens and arches wreathed with
+the yellow clusters of the Celine Forestier, and the Devoniensis.
+Mrs. Ferrers was a person who always discoursed of flowers by
+their botanical or fashionable names. She did not call a rose a
+rose, but went into raptures over a Marguerite de St. Armand, a
+Garnet Wolseley, a Gloire de Vitry, or an Etienne Levet, as the
+case might be.</p>
+
+<p>Here, smoking his cigar, which he politely suppressed at their
+approach, they discovered Mr. MacCloskie, the hard-faced, sandy-haired
+Scottish gardener.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have been taking a look at my grounds, I hear, MacCloskie,’
+Mr. Goring said pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, sir; I’ve looked about me a bit. I think I’ve seen
+pretty well everything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And the hot-houses leave room for improvement, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, sir, I’m not wishing to say anything disrespectful to
+your architect,’ began MacCloskie, with that deliberation which
+gave all his speeches an air of superior wisdom, ‘but if he had
+tried his hardest to spend the maximum of money in attaining
+the minimum of space and accommodation—to say nothing of
+his ventilation and his heating apparatus, which are just abominable—he
+couldn’t have succeeded better than he has—unconsciously.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear me, Mr. MacCloskie, that’s a bad account. And yet
+the gardeners here have managed to rub on very decently for a
+quarter of a century, with no better accommodation than you
+have seen to-day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ay, sir, that’s where it is. They just roobed on, poor fellows.
+And I can only say that it’s very creditable to them to do
+as well as they have done, and if they’re about a quarter of a
+century behind the times nobody can blame them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then we must build new houses—that’s inevitable, I conclude.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, sir, if you want to grow exotics.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yet I used to see a good deal of stephanotis about the rooms
+in my father’s time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ay, there’s a fine plant growing in a bit of a glass—shed,’
+said Mr. MacCloskie with ineffable contempt. ‘Necessity’s the
+mother of invention, Mr. Goring. Your gardeners have done
+just wonders. But with all deference to you, sir, that kind of
+thing wouldn’t suit me. And if Miss Lawford has any idea of
+my coming here by-and-by——’ with a respectful glance at his
+mistress, as he stood at ease, contemplating the spotless lining
+of his top-hat.</p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Lawford would like you to continue in her service
+when she is Mrs. Goring. Perhaps you will be good enough to
+give me an exact specification of the space you would require,
+and the form of house you would suggest. I wish Miss Lawford
+to be in no way a loser when she exchanges South Hill for
+Goring Abbey.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you, sir, you are very good, sir,’ murmured the
+Scotchman, as if it were for his gratification the houses were to
+be built. ‘This is a very fine place, sir; it would be a pity if it
+were to be behind the times in any particular.’</p>
+
+<p>The head gardener bowed and withdrew, everyone—even
+Aunt Rhoda—breathing more freely when he had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t he too utterly horrid?’ asked Daphne. ‘If there is a
+being I detest in this world it is he. Were I in Lina’s place I
+should take advantage of my marriage to get rid of him; but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</span>
+she will just go down to her grave domineered over by that
+man,’ concluded Daphne, mimicking MacCloskie’s northern
+tongue.</p>
+
+<p>‘He is not the most agreeable person in the world,’ said
+Lina; ‘but he is thoroughly conscientious.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you ever know a disagreeable person who did not set up
+for being a paragon of honesty?’ exclaimed Daphne contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p>They roamed about the rose-garden, which was a lovely
+place to loiter in upon a summer day, and lingered under the
+tulip-trees, where there were rustic chairs and a rustic table,
+and every incentive to idleness. Beyond the tulip-trees there
+was a shrubbery on the slope of the hill, a shrubbery which sheltered
+the rose-garden from bleak winds, and made it a thoroughly
+secluded spot. While the rest of the party sat talking under the
+big broad-leaved trees, Daphne shot off to explore the shrubbery.
+The first thing that attracted her attention was a large wire
+cage among the laurels.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that an aviary?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ answered Gerald, rising and going over to her. ‘These
+are my father’s antecedents.’</p>
+
+<p>He pulled away the laurel branches which had spread themselves
+in front of the cage, and Daphne saw that it contained
+only a shabby old barrow, a pickaxe, and shovel.</p>
+
+<p>‘Those were the stock-in-trade with which my father began
+his career,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe he had even the traditional
+half-crown. I’ve no doubt if he had possessed such a
+coin his mates would have made him spend it on beer. He
+began life, a barefooted, ignorant lad, upon a railroad in the
+north of England; and before his fortieth birthday he was one
+of the greatest contractors and one of the best-informed men
+of his time; but he never mastered the right use of the aspirate,
+and he never could bring himself to wear gloves. It was
+his fancy to keep those old tools of his, and to take his visitors
+to look at them, after they had gone the round of house and
+gardens.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you are proud of him,’ said Daphne, with a bright
+penetrating glance which seemed to pierce Mr. Goring’s soul.
+‘I should hate you if I thought that, even for one moment in
+your life, you could feel ashamed of such a father.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I’m afraid I must endure your hate,’ said Gerald.
+‘No; I have never felt ashamed of my father: he was the
+dearest, kindest, most unselfish, most indulgent father that ever
+spoiled an unworthy son. But I have occasionally felt ashamed
+of that barrow, when it has been exhibited and explained to a
+new acquaintance, and I have seen that the now acquaintance
+thought the whole thing—the mock mediæval abbey, and the
+barrow, and my dear simple-hearted dad—one stupendous joke.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I should be more ashamed of Felicia, Countess of Heronville,
+than of that barrow, if I were you,’ exclaimed Daphne,
+flushed and indignant.</p>
+
+<p>‘You little radical! Mistress Felicia was by no means an
+exemplary person, but she was one of the loveliest women at
+Charles’s court, where lovely women congregated by common
+consent, while all the ugly ones buried themselves at their
+husbands’ country seats, and thought that some fiery comet
+must be swooping down upon the world because of wickedness
+in high places. Don’t be too hard upon poor Lady Heronville.
+She died in the zenith of her charms, while quite a young
+woman.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think she ought to be pitied for that?’ demanded
+Daphne. ‘Why, it was the brightest fate Heaven could give
+her. The just punishment for her evil ways would have been a
+long loveless old age, and to see her beauty fade day by day, and
+to know that the world she loved despised and forgot her.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Whom the gods love die young, was said of old;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">And many deaths do they escape by this.”’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>‘Where did you find those lines, little one?’</p>
+
+<p>‘In a book we used to read aloud at Madame Tolmache’s,
+“Gems from Byron.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I see! Mere chippings, diamond dust. I was afraid
+you’d been at the Koh-i-noor itself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are we to have some tea, Gerald?’ asked Madoline, crossing
+to them and looking at her watch as she came. ‘It is half-past
+four, and we must be going home soon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘To the cloisters, ladies and gentlemen, to all that there is of
+the most mediæval in the Abbey.’</p>
+
+<p>They passed under a Gothic archway and found themselves
+on a square green lawn, in the midst of which was another fountain
+in a genuine old marble basin, a Roman relic dug up thirty
+years ago in the peninsula of Portland. A cloistered walk surrounded
+this grass-plot. A striped awning had been put up
+beside the fountain, and under this the tea-table was spread.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Lina, let us see if you can manage that ponderous tea-kettle,’
+said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is the handsomest I ever saw,’ sleepily remarked Mrs.
+Ferrers, who had found the afternoon somewhat dreary, since
+nobody had seemed to want her advice about anything. ‘But
+I must confess that I prefer the Rector’s George the Second
+silver, and old Swansea cups and saucers, to the highest exemplars
+of modern art.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘YEVE ME MY DETH, OR THAT I HAVE A SHAME.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir Vernon Lawford</span> was sitting alone in his study on the
+morning after the visit to Goring Abbey, when the door opened
+suddenly with a sharp jerk, and his younger daughter stood
+before him. The very manner in which the door opened told
+him, before he looked up from his desk, that the intruder was
+Daphne, and not the always welcome Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his daughter with cold severe eyes, as at
+a person who had no right to be there. Ever since she could
+remember, Daphne had feared her father much more than she
+loved him; but never had he seemed to her so awful a being as
+he appeared this morning in his own room, surrounded by all
+the symbols of power—the bronze bust of Cicero looking down
+at him from the bookcase; his despatch-box open at his side,
+bristling with pen-knives and paper-knives, and stern official
+stationery; his ponderous silver inkstand, presented by the
+Warwickshire yeomanry in acknowledgment of his merits as
+colonel; his russia-leather bound dictionaries and directories,
+and brazen letter-weighing machine—and all the pomp and circumstance
+of his business life about him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Daphne, what do you want?’ he asked, looking at
+her without a ray of sympathetic feeling in his handsome gray
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you please, papa,’ she faltered, blushing deeply under
+that severe gaze, and pleating up the edge of her lawn-tennis
+pinafore in supreme nervousness, ‘I don’t think I’m really
+finished.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Finished!’ he exclaimed, looking at her as if he thought
+she was an idiot. ‘Finished what? You never finish anything,
+or begin anything either, so far as I can hear, that is worth
+doing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My education, I mean, papa,’ she said, looking at him with
+eyes so lovely in hue and expression, so piteous in their timid
+pleading, that they ought to have touched him. ‘I know you
+sent me to Madame Tolmache to be finished, and that she was
+very expensive; but I’m afraid I came away horribly ignorant;
+and I begin to feel that a year or two more of schooling would
+be of very great value to me. I am older now, don’t you know,
+papa; and I should try more earnestly to improve myself.
+Indeed, indeed, papa, I would work very hard this time,’ urged
+Daphne, remorsefully remembering how little she had worked
+in the past. ‘I don’t care where you send me: to Asnières, or
+to Germany, or anywhere: so that I could only go on with my
+education.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go on with it at home,’ answered Sir Vernon contemptuously.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</span>
+‘You can read, and write, and spell, I suppose. Yes;
+I have some of your letters asking me for different things in
+those pigeon-holes. Any woman who can do as much as that
+can improve herself. There are books enough on those shelves’—with
+a glance at his classical and correct collection—‘to make
+you wiser than any woman need be. But as for this freak of
+wanting to go back to school——’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is no freak, papa. It is my most earnest desire. I feel
+it would be better—for all of us.’</p>
+
+<p>She had changed from red to white by this time, and stood
+before her father like a culprit, downcast and deadly pale.</p>
+
+<p>‘It would not be better for me who would have to pay the
+bills. I have paid a pretty penny already for your education;
+and you may suppose how vastly agreeable it is to me to hear
+your frank confession of ignorance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is best for me to tell the truth, papa. Do not deny me
+this favour. It is the first great thing I have ever asked of
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a very foolish thing, and I should be a fool if I humoured
+your caprice.’</p>
+
+<p>She gave a little cry of mental pain.</p>
+
+<p>‘How can I convince you that it is no caprice?’ she asked
+despairingly. ‘I was lying awake all last night thinking about
+it. I am most thoroughly in earnest, papa.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You were thoroughly in earnest about your boat; and now
+you are tired of it. You were intensely anxious to come home;
+and now you are tired of home. You are a creature of whims
+and fancies.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, I am not tired of my boat,’ she cried passionately. ‘I
+love it with all my heart, and the dear river, and this place, and
+Madoline—and you—if you would only let me love you. Father,’
+she said in a low tremulous voice, coming hurriedly to her father
+and kneeling at his feet, with clasped hands uplifted beseechingly,
+‘there are times in a woman’s life when a light shines
+suddenly upon her, showing her where her duty lies. I believe
+that it is my duty to go back to school, somewhere in France, or
+Germany, where I can get on with my education and grow serious
+and useful, as a woman ought to be. It will be very hard,
+it will be parting from all I love best in the world, but I feel
+and know that it is my duty. Let me go, dear father. The
+outlay of a few pounds cannot affect you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can it not? That shows how little you know of the world.
+When a man is overweighted as I am in this place, living up to
+every sixpence of his income, and so fettered that he cannot
+realise an acre of his estate, every hundred he has to spend is of
+moment. Your education has been a costly business already;
+and I distinctly refuse to spend another sixpence on it. If you
+have not profited by my outlay, so much the worse for you.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</span>
+Get up, child.’ She was still on her knees, looking at him in
+blank despair. ‘This melo-dramatic fooling is the very last
+thing to succeed with a man of my stamp. I detest heroics.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Very well, father,’ she answered in a subdued tone, strangling
+her sobs and standing straight and tall before him. ‘I
+hope if you should ever have cause to blame me for anything in
+the future you will remember this refusal to-day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall blame you if you deserve blame, you may be sure of
+that,’ he answered harshly.</p>
+
+<p>‘And never praise me when I deserve praise, and never love
+me, or sympathise with me, or be a father to me—except in
+name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Precisely,’ he said, looking downward with a gloomy brow.
+‘Except in name. And now be kind enough to leave me. I
+have a good many letters to write.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne obeyed without a word. When she was in the corridor
+outside, and had shut the door behind her, she stopped for
+a few moments leaning against the wall, looking straight before
+her with a countenance of inexpressible sadness.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was the only thing I could do,’ she murmured with a
+heavy sigh.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon told his elder daughter that afternoon of Daphne’s
+absurd fancy about going back to school.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you ever hear of such a mass of inconsistency?’ he
+exclaimed angrily. ‘After worrying you continually with appealing
+letters to be brought home, she is tired of us all and
+wants to be off again in less than six months.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is strange, papa, especially in one who is so thoroughly
+sweet and loving,’ said Madoline thoughtfully. ‘Do you know
+I’m afraid it must be my fault.’</p>
+
+<p>‘In what way?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have been urging her to continue her education; and perhaps
+I may have inadvertently given her the idea that she ought
+to go back to school.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is simply to suppose her an idiot, and unable to comprehend
+plain English,’ retorted Sir Vernon testily. ‘You are
+always making excuses for her. Hark!’ he cried, as a bright
+girlish laugh came ringing across the summer air. ‘There she
+is, playing tennis with Turchill. Would you suppose that two
+hours ago she was kneeling to me like a tragedy queen, her eyes
+streaming with tears, entreating to be sent back to school?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll reason her out of her fancy, dear father. She always
+gives way to me when I wish it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad she has just sense enough to understand your
+superiority.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest father, if you would be a little more affectionate to
+her—in your manner, I mean—I believe she would be a great
+deal happier.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</span></p>
+
+<p>Another ringing laugh from Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘She is monstrously unhappy, is she not?’ exclaimed Sir
+Vernon. ‘My dear Lina, that girl is a born <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">comédienne</i>. She
+will always be acting tragedy or comedy all her life through.
+This morning it was tragedy; this afternoon it is comedy. Do
+not let yourself be duped by her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Believe me, papa, you misjudge her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope it may be so.’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>‘Daphne, what is this fancy of yours about going back to
+school?’ asked Madoline, when she and her sister were sitting
+in the conservatory that evening in the sultry summer dusk,
+while Sir Vernon and the two young men were talking politics
+over their claret. ‘I was quite grieved to hear of it, believing,
+as I did, that you were very happy at home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, so I am—intensely happy—with you, darling,’ answered
+Daphne, taking her sister’s hand, and twisting the old-fashioned
+brilliant hoops, which Lina had inherited from her
+grandmother, round and round upon the slender finger. ‘So
+I am, dear, utterly happy. But happiness is not the be-all and
+end-all of this life, is it, Lina? The Rector is continually telling
+us that it isn’t, in those prosy port-winey old sermons of
+his; but if he were only candid about his feelings he would say
+that the end and aim of this life was dinner. I don’t suppose
+I was born only to be happy, was I, Lina? We unfortunate
+mortals are supposed to belong to the silkworm rather than to
+the butterfly species, and to work out a career of usefulness
+in the grub and worm stages, before we earn the right to flutter
+feebly for a little while as elderly moths. Youth, from a Christian
+point of view, is meant for work and self-abnegation, and
+duty, and all that kind of thing; isn’t it, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Every stage of life has its obligations, dearest; but your
+duties are very easy ones,’ answered Madoline gently. ‘You
+have only to be respectful and obedient to your father, and to
+do as much good as you can to those who need your kindness,
+and to be grateful to God for the many good gifts He has lavished
+upon you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I suppose that upon the whole I am a very fortunate
+young person, although I am a pauper,’ said Daphne sententiously.
+‘I have youth, and the use of all my faculties, and a
+ridiculously good constitution. I know I can walk knee-deep
+in wet grass and never catch cold, and drink quarts of iced
+water when I am in a fever of heat, and do all manner of things
+that people consider tantamount to suicide, and be none the
+worse for my folly. And then I have a fine house to live
+in; though I have the sense that I am nobody in it; and I
+have a very aristocratic father—to look at. Yes, Madoline, I
+have all these things, and they are of no account to me; but I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</span>
+have your love, and that is worth them all a hundred times
+over.’</p>
+
+<p>The sisters sat with clasped hands, Madoline touched by the
+wayward girl’s affection. The moon was shining above the
+deodaras; the last of the nightingales was singing amidst the
+darkness of the shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why do you want to go back to school, Daphne?’ asked
+Lina again, coaxingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t want to go.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But this morning you were begging papa to send you
+back.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I had an idea that I ought to improve myself—this
+morning. But as papa refused to grant my request in a very
+decisive manner, I have put the notion out of my head. I
+thought that another year with Madame Tolmache might have
+improved my French, and reconciled me to the necessity for a
+subjunctive mood, which I never could see while I was at
+Asnières; or that a twelvemonth in Germany might have enabled
+me to distinguish the verbs that require the dative case
+after them, from the verbs that are satisfied with the accusative,
+which at present is a thing utterly beyond me. But papa
+says no, and, as I am much fonder of boating and tennis and
+billiards than of study, I am not going to find fault with papa’s
+decision.’</p>
+
+<p>This was all said so lightly, with so much of the natural
+recklessness of a high-spirited girl who has never had a secret
+in her life, that Madoline had not a moment’s doubt of her
+sister’s candour. Yet there was a hardness in Daphne’s tone
+to-night that grieved her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is fond of billiards?’ asked Gerald’s lazy tones, a little
+way above them, and, looking up, they saw him leaning with
+folded arms upon the broad marble balustrade. ‘Are you coming
+up to the drawing-room to give us some music, or are we
+coming down to the billiard-room to play a match with you?’
+he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>‘Whichever my father likes,’ answered Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Sir Vernon will not play this evening. He has gone to his
+room to read the evening papers. I think he has not forgiven
+Turchill for the series of flukes by which he won that game last
+night. Edgar and I will have a clear stage and no favour this
+evening, and we mean to give you two young ladies a tremendous
+licking.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will have an easy victim in me,’ said Madoline. ‘I have
+not played half-a-dozen times since you left home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Devotion surpassing Penelope’s. And Daphne, I suppose,
+is still a tyro at the game. We must give you seventy-five out
+of a hundred.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are vastly condescending,’ exclaimed Daphne, drawing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</span>
+herself up. ‘You will give me nothing! I don’t care how
+ignominiously I am beaten; but I will not be treated like a
+baby.’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Und etwas schnïppish doch zugleich</i>,’ quoted Mr. Goring,
+smiling to himself in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>And now Edgar Turchill came out of the drawing-room, and
+the two young men went down the shallow flight of steps to
+the conservatory, where Madoline and her sister were still
+seated in their wicker-work chairs in front of the open door,
+through which the moonlit garden looked so fair a scene of
+silent peace.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne is quite right to reject your humiliating concessions,’
+said Edgar. ‘She and I will play against you and Madoline, and
+beat you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Easily done, my worthy Saxon,’ answered Gerald, who was
+apt to make light of his friend’s ancient lineage, in a good-natured
+easy-going way. ‘I have never given more than a fraction
+of my mind to billiards.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you must be a deuced bad player,’ said Edgar bluntly.
+They all went down into the billiard-room, where Daphne’s
+eyes sparkled with unaccustomed fire in the lamplight, as if the
+mere notion of the coming contest had fevered her excitable
+brain. Turchill, who was thoroughly earnest in his amusements,
+took off his coat with the air of a man who meant business.
+Gerald Goring slipped out of his as if he were going to
+lie down for an after-dinner nap on one of the broad morocco-covered
+divans.</p>
+
+<p>And now began the fight. Gerald and Madoline were obviously
+nowhere, from the very beginning. Daphne had a firmness
+of wrist, a hawklike keenness of eye, an audacity of purpose
+that accomplished miracles. The more difficult the position the
+better her stroke. Her boldness conquered where a more cautious
+player must have failed. She sent her adversaries’ ball
+rattling into the pockets with a dash that even stimulated Gerald
+Goring to applaud his antagonist. And while she swelled the
+score by the most startling strokes, Edgar crept quietly after her
+with his judicious and careful play—doing wonderful things with
+his arms behind his back, in the easiest manner.</p>
+
+<p>‘I throw up the sponge,’ cried Gerald, after struggling feebly
+against his fate. ‘Lina, dearest, forgive me for my candour, but
+you are playing almost as wretchedly as I. We are both out of
+it. You two young gladiators had better finish the game by
+playing against each other up to a hundred, while Lina and I
+look on and applaud you. I like to see youth energetic, even if
+its energies are misdirected.’</p>
+
+<p>He seated himself languidly on the divan which commanded
+the best view of the table. Lina sat by his side, her white
+hands moving with an almost rhythmical regularity as she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</span>
+knitted a soft woollen comforter for one of her numerous pensioners.</p>
+
+<p>‘My busy Penelope, don’t you think you night rest from
+your labours now that Ulysses is safe at home, and the suitors
+are all put to flight?’ asked Gerald, looking admiringly at the
+industrious hands. ‘You have no idea how horribly idle you
+make me feel.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think idleness is the privilege of your sex, Gerald; but it
+would be the penalty of ours. I am wretched without some kind
+of work.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Another case of misdirected energy,’ sighed Gerald, throwing
+himself lazily back against the India-matting dado, and
+clasping his hands above his head, as he watched the antagonists.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was playing as if her life depended on her victory.
+Her slim figure was braced like a young athlete’s, every muscle
+of the round white arm defined under her muslin sleeve—the
+bare supple wrist and delicate hand looking as strong as steel.
+She moved round the table with the swift lightness of some wild
+thing of the woods—graceful, shy, untamable, half savage, yet
+wholly beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar Turchill went on all the while in his businesslike way,
+playing with either hand, and behaving just as coolly as if he
+had been playing against Sir Vernon. Yet every now and then,
+when it was Daphne’s turn to play, he fell into a dreamy contemplative
+mood, and stood on one side watching her as if she
+were something too wonderful to be quite human.</p>
+
+<p>‘There’s a stroke!’ he cried, as she left him tight under the
+cushion, with nothing to play for. ‘I taught her. Oughtn’t I
+to be proud of such a pupil?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You taught me sculling, and lawn-tennis, and billiards,’ said
+Daphne, considering what she should do next. ‘All I have ever
+learnt worth knowing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’ murmured Madoline, looking up reproachfully
+from her ivory needles.</p>
+
+<p>‘I say it advisedly,’ argued Daphne, making another score.
+‘Edgar, I am not at all sure you are marking honestly. Mr.
+Goring would mark for us if he were not too lazy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not too lazy,’ murmured Gerald languidly, ‘but too delightfully
+occupied in watching you. I would not spoil my pleasure
+by mixing it with business for the world.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What is the use of book-learning?’ continued Daphne,
+going on with her argument. ‘I maintain that Edgar has taught
+me all I know worth knowing, for he has taught me how to be
+happy. I adore the river; I doat upon billiards; and next best
+after billiards I like lawn-tennis. Do you suppose I shall ever
+be happier for having learnt French grammar, or the Rule of
+Three!’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, you are the most inconsistent person I ever met
+with,’ said Madoline, almost angry. ‘Only this morning you
+wanted to go back to school to finish your education.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did she?’ asked Gerald, suddenly attentive.</p>
+
+<p>‘That was all nonsense,’ exclaimed Daphne, colouring violently.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Turchill laughed heartily at the idea.</p>
+
+<p>‘Go back to school!’ he exclaimed. ‘What, after having
+tasted liberty, and learnt to shoot Stratford bridge, and to beat
+her master at billiards—for that last cannon makes the hundred,
+Daphne! Back to school, indeed! What a little humbug you
+must be to talk of such a thing!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ answered Daphne coolly, as she put away her cue, and
+came quietly round to her sister’s side; ‘I am a little bit of a
+humbug. I think I try to humbug myself sometimes. I persuaded
+myself this morning that I really thirsted for knowledge;
+but my father contrived to quench that righteous thirst with
+a very big dose of cold water—so henceforth I renounce all
+attempts to improve myself.’</p>
+
+<p>The clock on the chimney-piece struck the half-hour after ten.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ordered my dog-cart for ten,’ said Gerald; ‘I hope we
+have not transgressed, Lina, by staying so late?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not going till eleven, unless Miss Lawford sends me
+away,’ said Turchill. ‘Eleven is the mystic hour at which Sir
+Vernon usually tells me to go about my business. I know the
+ways and manners of the house better than a wretched wanderer
+like you, whose last idea of time is derived from some wretched
+old Dalecarlian town-clock.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We had better go back to the drawing-room,’ suggested
+Madoline. ‘My father has finished his letters by this time, I
+daresay.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then good-night everybody,’ said Daphne. ‘I’m going into
+the garden to cool myself after that fearful struggle, and then
+to bed.’</p>
+
+<p>She ran off through the conservatory while Gerald was opening
+the opposite door for Madoline to go up to the drawing-room
+by the indoor staircase.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne stopped to draw breath on the moonlit terrace.</p>
+
+<p>‘How ridiculously I have been gabbling!’ she said to herself,
+with her hands clasping her burning forehead. ‘Why
+can’t I hold my tongue? I am detestable to myself and everybody.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ said someone close at her side, in a tone of friendliest
+concern, ‘I’m afraid you’re really tired.’</p>
+
+<p>It was Edgar Turchill, who had followed her through the
+conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>‘Tired! Not at all. I would play against you again to-night—and
+beat you—if it were not too late.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘But I am sure you are tired; there is a something in your
+voice—strained, unnatural. Have you been vexed to-day?
+My poor little Daphne,’ he went on tenderly, taking her hand,
+‘something has gone wrong with you, I am sure. Has your
+aunt been lecturing?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No. My father was unkind to me this morning; and I
+was weak enough to take his unkindness to heart; which I
+ought not to have done, being so well broken in to it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And did you really and truly wish to go back to school?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I really and truly felt that I was an ignoramus, and that
+I had better go on with my education while I was young enough
+to learn.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, if you had all the knowledge of all the girls in
+Girton screwed into that little golden head of yours, you
+wouldn’t be one whit more charming than you are now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay the effect would be the other way; but I might
+be a great deal more useful. I might teach in a poor school, or
+nurse the sick, or do something in some way to help my fellow-creatures.
+But sculling, and billiard-playing, and lawn-tennis—isn’t
+it a horridly empty life?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If there were not birds and butterflies, and many bright
+useless things, this world wouldn’t be half so beautiful as it is,
+Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, now you are dropping into poetry, like Mr. Wegg, and
+I must go to bed,’ she retorted, with good-humoured petulance,
+cheered by his kindness. ‘Good-night, Edgar. You are always
+good to me. I shall always like you,’ she said gently.</p>
+
+<p>‘Always like me. Yes, I hope so, Daphne. And do you
+still think that you would rather have had me than Gerald
+Goring for your brother?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ten thousand times.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yet he is a thoroughly amiable fellow, kind to everyone,
+generous to a fault.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A man with a million of money can’t be generous,’ answered
+Daphne; ‘he can never give anything that he wants for
+himself. Generosity means self-sacrifice, doesn’t it? It was
+generous of you to leave Hawksyard at six in the morning in
+order to teach me to scull.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I would do a great deal more than that to please you, and
+count it no sacrifice,’ said Edgar gravely.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sure you would,’ answered Daphne, with easy frankness.</p>
+
+<p>She was so thoroughly convinced that he would never
+leave off caring for Madoline, and would go down to his grave
+fondly faithful to his first misplaced affection, that no word or
+tone or look of his, however significant, suggested to her any
+other feeling on his part than an honest brotherly regard for
+herself.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Tell me what you think of Goring, now that you have had
+time to form an opinion about him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think that he is devoted to Lina, and that is all I want
+to know about him,’ answered Daphne decisively.</p>
+
+<p>‘And do you think him worthy of her?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, that is a wide question. There was never a man living
+except King Arthur that I should think absolutely worthy of
+my sister Madoline; but as he is lying in Glastonbury Abbey, I
+think Mr. Goring will do as well as anyone else. I hope Lina
+will govern him, for his own sake as well as hers.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You think him weak, then?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think him self-indulgent; and a self-indulgent man is
+always a weak man, isn’t he? Look at Gladstone now, a man
+of surpassing energy, of illimitable industry, a man who will
+eat a snack of cold beef and drink a glass of cold water for his
+luncheon, at his desk, in the midst of his work, anyhow. Mr.
+Lampton, the new member who went up to see him, gave us a
+sketch of him in his study, living so simply and working so
+hard, so thoroughly homely and unaffected.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, I thought you were a hardened little Tory!’</p>
+
+<p>‘So I am; but I can admire the individual though I may
+detest his politics. That is the kind of man I should like
+Lina to marry: a man without a selfish thought, a man made
+of iron.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you think a wife might hurt herself now and then
+against the rough edges of the iron? Those unselfish men are
+apt to demand a good deal of self-sacrifice from others.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you think Lina was made to sit in a drawing-room all
+her life, among hot-house flowers. Well, I believe she will be
+very happy at Goring Abbey. She likes a quiet domestic life,
+and to live among the people she loves. And Mr. Goring’s
+selfishness will hardly trouble her. She has had such splendid
+training with papa.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, do you think it is quite right to speak of your
+father in that way?’ asked Edgar reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>He was wounded by her flippant tone, hurt by every evidence
+of faultiness in one whom he hoped the future would develop
+into perfect woman and perfect wife.</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you like me to be a hypocrite?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Daphne. But if you can’t speak of Sir Vernon as he
+ought to be spoken of, don’t you think it would be better to
+say nothing at all?’</p>
+
+<p>‘For the future I shall be dumb, in deference to Mr. Turchill—and
+the proprieties. But it was nice to have one friend
+in the world with whom I could be thoroughly confidential,’
+she added coaxingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pray be confidential with me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t, if you once begin to lecture. I have a horror of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</span>
+people who talk to me for my own good. That is Aunt Rhoda’s
+line. She is never tired of preaching to me for my good, and
+I never feel so utterly bad as I do after one of her preachments.
+And now I really must say good-night. Don’t forget that you
+are engaged to dine at the Rectory to-morrow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are not you and Lina going?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, and Mr. Goring. It is to be a regular family gathering.
+Papa is asked, but I cherish a faint hope that he may not
+feel in the humour for going. I beg your pardon,’ exclaimed
+Daphne, making him a ceremonious curtsy. ‘My honoured
+parent has been invited, and wherever he is his children must
+be happy. Is that the kind of thing you like?’ she asked tripping
+away to the little half-glass door at the other end of the
+terrace.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar ran after her to open the door for her; but she was
+fleet as Atalanta, and there was nobody to distract her with
+golden apples. She shut the door and drew the bolt, just as
+Edgar reached it, and nodded a smiling good-night to him
+through the glass. He stopped to see the white frock vanish
+from the lamp-lit lobby, and then turned away to light a cigarette
+and take a solitary turn on the terrace before going back to the
+drawing-room to make his adieux.</p>
+
+<p>It was a spot where a man might love to linger on such a
+night as this. The winding river, showing in fitful glimpses
+between its shadowy willows; the distant woods; the dim
+lights of the little quiet town; the tall spire rising above
+the trees; made up a landscape dearer to Edgar Turchill’s honest
+English heart than all the blue mountains and vine-clad valleys
+of the Sunny South. He was a son of the soil, with all his
+desires and prejudices and affections rooted in the land on
+which he had been born. ‘How sweet—how completely lovable
+she is,’ he said to himself, meditating over that final cigarette,
+‘and how thoroughly she trusts me! Her mind is as clear as
+a rivulet, through which one can count every pebble and every
+grain of golden sand.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND TO THE DINNER FASTE THEY HEM SPEDDE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Mr. MacCloskie’s</span> suggestions for new hot-houses at Goring
+Abbey were on so large a scale as to necessitate a good deal of
+consultation with architect and builder before the new constructions
+and alterations of existing structures were put in hand.
+The head gardener at South Hill had tried his hardest to secure
+the whole organisation and direction of the work for himself,
+and to have large powers in the choice of the men who were to
+carry it out.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Ye’ll not need any architect, Mr. Goring, if ye’ll joost let
+me explain my mind to the builder,’ said this modest Caledonian.
+‘Architects know a deal about the Parthenon and the Temple of
+the Winds, and that kind of old-fashioned classical stuff, but
+there’s not one of ’em knows how to plan a good workable hot-house,
+or to build a flue that won’t smoke when the wind’s
+contrary. Architects are very good for the fronts of clubhouses
+and ceevil-service stores, and that like; but if you trust
+your new houses to an architect, I’ll give odds when they’re done
+there’ll be no place for me to put my coals. If you’ll just give
+me free scope——’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very good, Mr. MacCloskie,’ answered Gerald with
+velvety softness, ‘but my father was a thoroughly practical man,
+and I believe he knew as much of the science of construction as
+any man living; yet he always employed an architect when he
+wanted anything built for himself, were it only a dustbin. I’ll
+stick to his lines.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Very well, sir, you must please yourself. But an orchid-house
+is a creetical thing to build. The outside of it may be as
+handsome as St. Peter’s at Rome; but your orchids won’t thrive
+unless they like the inside arrangements, and for them ye’ll want
+a practical man.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll get a practical man, Mr. MacCloskie; you may be sure
+of that,’ answered Gerald, ineffably calm, though the Scot was
+looking daggers.</p>
+
+<p>The morning before Mrs. Ferrers’s family dinner was devoted
+to the architect, who came down from London to Goring Abbey,
+expressly to advise and be instructed. He was entertained at
+luncheon at the Abbey; and Lina drove over under her aunt’s
+wing to meet him, while Gerald’s thoroughbred hack—a horse of
+such perfect manners that it mattered very little whether his
+rider had hands or no hands—ambled along the turfy borders of
+the pleasant country road beside the phaeton.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had her day all to herself, since, knowing her to be
+alone at South Hill, Edgar had no excuse for going there; and,
+as Mr. Turchill argued with himself, a man must give some
+portion of his life to the dearest old mother and the most picturesque
+old house in the county. So, Edgar, with his fancies
+flying off and circling about South Hill, contrived to spend a
+moony day at home, mending his fishing-rods, reviewing his
+guns, writing a few letters, and going in and out of his mother’s
+homely old-fashioned morning-room twenty times between
+breakfast and luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill had been invited to the family dinner at
+Arden Rectory, and had accepted the invitation, though she was
+not given to dissipation of any kind, and she and her son found
+a good deal to say about the coming feast during Edgar’s desultory
+droppings-in.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you’ll like her, mother,’ said Edgar, stopping, with a
+gun in one hand and an oily rag in the other, to look dreamily
+across the moat to the quiet meadows beyond, where the dark
+red Devon cows contrasted deliciously with the fresh green turf
+sprinkled with golden buttercups and silvery marguerites.</p>
+
+<p>‘Like her!’ echoed Mrs. Turchill, lifting her soft blue eyes
+in mild astonishment from her matronly task of darning one of
+the best damask table-cloths. ‘Why she is the sweetest girl I
+know. I would have given ten years of my life for you to have
+married her.’</p>
+
+<p>This was awkward for Edgar, who had spoken of Daphne,
+while Mrs. Turchill thought of Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not with my consent, mother,’ he said, laughing, and reddening
+as he laughed. ‘I couldn’t have spared a single year.
+But I wasn’t speaking of Madoline just then. I know of old
+how fond you are of her. I was talking of poor little Daphne,
+whom you haven’t seen since she came from her French school.’</p>
+
+<p>‘French school!’ exclaimed Mrs. Turchill contemptuously.
+‘I hate the idea of those foreign schools, regular Jesuitical places,
+where they take girls to operas and theatres and give them fine
+notions,’ pursued the Saxon matron, whose ideas on the subject
+were slightly mixed. ‘Why couldn’t Sir Vernon send her to the
+Misses Tompion, at Leamington? That’s a respectable school if
+you like. Good evangelical principles, separate bedrooms, and
+plain English diet. I hope the French school hasn’t spoilt
+Daphne. She was a pretty little girl with bright hair, I remember,
+but she had rather wild ways. Something too much of a
+tomboy for my taste.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She was so young, mother, when you saw her last, not
+fifteen.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I suppose French governesses have tamed her down,
+and that she’s pretty stiff and prim by this time,’ said Mrs.
+Turchill with chilling indifference.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, mother, she is a kind of girl whom no training would
+ever make conventional. She is thoroughly natural, original
+even, and doesn’t mind what she says.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That sounds as if she talked slang,’ said Mrs. Turchill, who,
+although the kindest of women in her conduct, could be severe
+of speech on occasion, ‘and of all things I detest slang in a
+woman. I hope she is industrious. The idleness of the young
+women of the present day is a crying sin.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar Turchill seemed hardly to be aware of this last remark.
+He was polishing the gun-metal industriously with that horrible
+oily rag which accompanied him everywhere on his muddling
+mornings at home.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s accomplished, I suppose,’ speculated Mrs. Turchill—‘plays,
+and sings, and paints on velvet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ye—es; that’s to say I’m not sure about the velvet,’ answered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</span>
+Edgar faintly, not remembering any special artistic performances
+of Daphne’s except certain attempts on a drawing-block,
+which had seemed to him too green and too cloudy to lead
+to much, and which he had never beheld in an advanced stage.
+‘She is awfully fond of reading,’ he added in rather a spasmodic
+manner, after an interval of silent thought. ‘The poetry she
+knows would astonish you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That would be easy,’ retorted Mrs. Turchill. ‘My father
+and mother didn’t approve of poetry, and Cowper, Thomson,
+and Kirke White were the only poets allowed to be read by us
+girls at old Miss Tompion’s—these ladies are nieces of my Miss
+Tompion, you know, Edgar.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How can I help knowing it, mother, when you’ve told me a
+hundred and fifty times?’ exclaimed her son, more impatiently
+than his wont.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Edgar, my dear, if you’re tired of my conversation—’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, you dear peppery old party, not a bit. Go on like an
+old dear as you are. Only I thought you were rather hard upon
+poor little Daphne just now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How can I be hard upon her, when I haven’t seen her for
+the last three years! Dear, dear, what a small place Leamington
+was in my time,’ pursued Mrs. Turchill, musing blandly upon
+the days of her youth; ‘but it was much more select. None of
+these rich people from Birmingham; none of these Londoners
+coming down to hunt; but a very superior class—invalids, elderly
+people who came to drink the waters, and to consult Doctor
+Jephson.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It must have been lively,’ murmured Edgar, not deeply
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was not lively, Edgar, but it was select,’ corrected Mrs.
+Turchill with dignity, as she paused with her head on one side
+to admire the neatness of her own work.</p>
+
+<p>She was the kindest and best of mothers, but Edgar felt on
+this particular occasion that she was rather stupid, and a trifle
+narrow in her ideas. A purely rustic life has its disadvantages,
+and a life which is one long procession of placid prosperous days,
+knowing little more variety than the change of the seasons, is
+apt to blunt the edge of the keenest intellect. Mrs. Turchill
+ought to have been more interested in Daphne, Edgar thought.</p>
+
+<p>‘She will be delighted with her when she sees her,’ he reasoned,
+comforting himself. ‘Who can help being charmed with
+a girl who is so thoroughly charming?’</p>
+
+<p>And then he took up his gun and his rag, and strolled away
+to another part of the roomy old house, so soberly and thoroughly
+old-fashioned, not with the gimcrack spurious old fashion of to-day,
+but with the grave ponderous realities of centuries ago—walls
+four feet thick, deeply-recessed windows, massive untrimmed
+joists, low ceilings, narrow passages, oak wainscoting,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</span>
+inconveniences and shortcomings of all kinds, but the subtle
+charm of the remote past, the romantic feeling of a house that
+has many histories, pervading everything. Edgar would not
+have changed Hawksyard and his three thousand a-year for Goring
+Abbey and a million. The house and the land around it—or
+at any rate the land—had belonged to his race from time immemorial,
+far back in the dim days of the Heptarchy. Tradition
+held that the first of the Turchills had been a sokeman who
+possessed a yard of land on the old feudal tenure, one of his
+obligations being that he should breed hawks for the king’s falconers,
+and thus the place had come in time to be called Hawksyard,
+long after the last hawk bred there had flown away to join
+some wild branch of the honey-buzzard family in the tree-tops
+of primeval Arden, and the yard of land had swelled into a very
+respectable manor. Edgar rather liked to believe that the
+founder of his race had been a sokeman, who had held thirty
+acres of land from the king at a penny an acre, and had furnished
+labourers for the royal harvest, and had ridden up and down the
+field with a wand in his hand to see that his men worked properly.
+This curious young man was as proud of Turchill the
+sokeman as of Turchill the high sheriff. If it was a humble
+origin its humility was of such ancient date that it became distinction.
+Turchill of the thirty acres was like Adam, or Paris,
+or David. In the long line of the Turchills whose bones were
+lying in the vaults below Hawksyard Church there had been
+men distinguished in the field, the Church, and the law; men
+who had fought on sea and land; men who had won power in
+the State, and used it well, true alike to king and commons. But
+the ruck of the Turchills had been country squires like Edgar,
+and Edgar’s father; men who farmed their own land and lived
+upon it, and who had no ambitions and few interests or desires
+beyond their native soil.</p>
+
+<p>Hawksyard was a real moated grange. The house formed
+three sides of a quadrangle, with a heavily buttressed garden
+wall for the fourth side. The water flowed all round the solid
+base of the building, a wide deep moat, well stocked with pike
+and eels, carp and roach. The square inner garden was a prim
+parterre of the seventeenth century, and there was not a flower
+grew there more modern than Lord Bacon’s day. This was a
+Turchill fancy. All the novelties of nineteenth-century horticulture
+might flourish in the spacious garden on the other side
+of the moat; but this little bit of ground within the gray old
+walls was a sacred enclosure, dedicated to the spirit of the past.
+Here the old yew-trees were clipped into peacocks. Here grew
+rosemary; lavender; periwinkle, white, purple, and blue; germander;
+flags; sweet marjoram; primroses; anemones; hyacinths;
+and the rare fritillaria; double white violets, which
+bloom in April, and again at Bartholomew-tide; gilliflowers;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</span>
+sweetbrier; and the musk-rose. Here the brazen sun-dial, on
+its crumbling stone pedestal, reminded the passer-by that no
+man is always wise. Here soft mosses, like tawny velvet, crept
+over the gray relics of an abbey that had been destroyed soon
+after the grange was built—the stone coffin of a mitred abbot;
+the crossed legs of a knightly crusader, with a headless heraldic
+dog at his feet. Here was the small circular fish-pond into which
+the last of the abbots was supposed to have pitched headforemost,
+and incontinently drowned himself, walking alone at midnight
+in a holy trance.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill was almost as fond as Edgar was of Hawksyard;
+but her affection took a commonplace turn. She was not
+to the manner born.</p>
+
+<p>She had come to the grange from a smart nineteenth-century
+villa, and though she was very proud of the grave old house of
+which her husband had made her the mistress, her pride was
+mingled with an idea that Hawksyard was inconvenient, and
+that its old fashion was a thing to be apologised for and deprecated
+at every turn. Her chief delight was in keeping her house
+in order; and her servants were drilled to an almost impossible
+perfection in every duty appertaining to house-cleaning. Nobody’s
+brasses, or oak floors, or furniture, or family plate, or pewter
+dinner-service, ever looked so bright as Mrs. Turchill’s. Nowhere
+were windows so spotless; nowhere was linen so exquisitely
+white, or of such satin-like smoothness. Mrs. Turchill lived for
+these things. When she was in London, or at the sea-side, she
+would be miserable on rainy days at the idea that Jane or Mary
+would leave the windows open, and that the brass fenders and
+fire-irons were all going to ruin.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar spent a moony purposeless day, dawdling a good deal
+in the garden on the other side of the moat, where the long old-fashioned
+borders were full of tall white lilies and red moss-roses,
+vivid scarlet geranium, heliotrope and calceolaria, a feast
+of sweet scents and bright colours. There was a long and wide
+lawn without a flower bed on it—a level expanse of grass; and
+on the side opposite the flower border there was a row of good
+old mulberry and walnut trees; then came a light iron fence,
+and a stretch of meadow land beyond it. The grounds at Hawksyard
+made no pretence of being a park. There was not even a
+shrubbery, only that straight row of old trees, standing up out
+of the grass, with a gravel walk between them and the fence,
+across which Edgar used to feed and fondle his cows, or coax the
+shy brood mares and their foals to social intercourse.</p>
+
+<p>He looked round his domain doubtfully to-day, wondering if
+it were good enough for Daphne, this poor table-land of a
+garden, a flat lawn, a long old-fashioned border crammed with
+homely flowers, the yew-tree arbour at the end of yonder walk.
+How poor a thing it seemed after South Hill, with its picturesque<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</span>
+timber and extensive view, its broad terrace and sloping lawn,
+its rich variety of shrubs and conifers!</p>
+
+<p>‘It isn’t because I am fond of the place that she would care
+for it,’ he told himself despondently. ‘I’m afraid there’s nothing
+romantic or striking about it—except the moat. I’m glad she’s
+so fond of water.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar smoked a cigarette or two under the mulberry-trees,
+looked at his cows, talked to some of his men, and thus contrived
+to wear away the afternoon till the clock over the gateway
+struck five.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother’s tea-time. I’ll go and have a cup with her,’ he said
+to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Going out to dinner was a tremendous piece of business with
+Mrs. Turchill. She was more serious and solemn about it than
+a strictly modern lady would feel about going to be married.
+Even in an instance of this kind, where the dinner was supposed
+to be entirely unceremonious, a friendly little gathering arranged
+on the spur of the moment, she was still full of fuss and preparation.
+She had spent an hour in her bed-chamber before luncheon,
+arranging and discussing with her maid Deborah what
+gown she would or would not wear on the occasion; and this
+discussion involved a taking out and unfolding of all her dinner-gowns,
+and an offering of divers laces upon divers bodices, to see
+which went best with which. A review of this kind generally
+ended by a decision in favour of black velvet, or satin, or silk,
+or brocade, as the case might be; Mrs. Turchill being much
+richer in gowns than in opportunities for wearing them.</p>
+
+<p>‘I always like myself best in black,’ she would say, with a
+glance at the reflection of her somewhat florid complexion in the
+Chippendale glass.</p>
+
+<p>‘You always look the lady in your velvet, mum,’ Deborah
+would answer sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>Then after a day of quiet usefulness about her house the
+worthy matron would collect her energies over a leisurely cup of
+tea, and perhaps allow herself the refreshment of a nap after her
+tea, before she began the solemn business of the toilet.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage had been ordered for a quarter past seven,
+though it was but half an hour’s drive to Arden Rectory, and at
+seven o’clock Mrs. Turchill was seated in the white parlour, in
+all the dignity of her velvet gown and point-lace cap, her hereditary
+amethysts, supposed to be second only to those once
+possessed by George the Third’s virtuous consort, and her scarlet
+and gold Indian shawl. She was a comely matron, with a complexion
+that had never been damaged by cark or care, gas or late
+hours: a rosy-faced country-bred dame, with bright blue eyes,
+white teeth, and plentiful brown hair, in which the silver threads
+were hardly visible.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was standing by the open window, just where he had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</span>
+stood in the morning with his gun, sorely perplexed as to the
+disposal of those fifteen minutes which had to be got through
+before the most punctual of coachmen would bring the carriage
+to the door. The London papers were lying unheeded on the
+table; but Edgar had felt very little interest of late in the welfare
+of nations, or even in the last dreadful murder in Whitechapel.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope my cap is right,’ said Mrs. Turchill anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>‘How could it be wrong, mother, when you’ve Deborah and
+your looking-glass, and have never been known to dress yourself
+in a hurry?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I dislike doing anything in a hurry, Edgar. It is against
+my principles. But I never feel sure about the set of my cap.
+I am afraid Deborah’s eye is not quite correct, and a glass is
+dreadfully deceiving. I wish you’d look, Edgar, if it isn’t too
+much trouble.’</p>
+
+<p>This was said reproachfully, as her son was kneeling on the
+window-seat staring idly down into the moat, as if he wanted to
+discover the whereabouts of an ancient pike that had evaded
+him last year.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear mother,’ he exclaimed, turning himself about to
+survey her, ‘to my eye—which may be no better than Deborah’s—that
+lace arrangement which you call a cap appears mathematically
+exact, as precise as your own straight, honest mind.
+There’s Dobson with the carriage. Come along, mother.’</p>
+
+<p>He led her out, established her comfortably in her own particular
+seat in the large landau, and seated himself opposite to
+her with a beaming countenance.</p>
+
+<p>‘How happy you look, Edgar!’ said Mrs. Turchill, wondering
+at this unusual radiance. ‘One would think it were a novelty
+for you to dine out. Yet I am sure,’ somewhat plaintively,
+‘you don’t very often dine at home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The Rectory dinners are not to be despised, mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mrs. Ferrers is an excellent manager, and does everything
+very nicely; but as you don’t much care what you eat that
+would hardly make you so elated. I am rather surprised that
+you care about meeting Madoline and Mr. Goring so often,’
+added Mrs. Turchill, who had not quite forgiven Lina for having
+refused to marry her son.</p>
+
+<p>That is the worst of making a confidante of a mother. She
+has an inconveniently long memory.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have nothing but kindly feelings for either of them,’ answered
+Edgar. ‘Don’t you know the old song, mother—“Shall
+I, wasting in despair, die because a woman’s fair?” I don’t look
+much like wasting in despair, do I, old lady?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should be very sorry to see you unhappy, Edgar; but I
+shall never love any wife of yours as well as I could have loved
+Madoline.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say that, mother. That’s too hard on the future Mrs.
+Turchill.’</p>
+
+<p>This was a curious speech from a youth who six months ago
+had protested that he should never marry. But perhaps this
+was only Edgar’s fun. Mrs. Turchill shared the common delusion
+of mothers, and thought her son a particularly humorous
+young man.</p>
+
+<p>What a sweetly Arcadian retreat Arden Rectory looked on
+this fair summer evening, and how savoury was the odour of a
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sole au gratin</i> which blended with the flowery perfumes of the
+low-panelled hall! The guests had wandered out through the
+window of the small drawing-room to the verandah and lawn
+in front of it. That long French window was a blot upon the
+architectural beauty of the half-timbered Tudor cottage, but it
+was very useful for circulation between drawing-room and
+garden.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were sitting under the verandah;
+Daphne was standing a little way off on the lawn talking to the
+Rector and Gerald Goring. She was speaking with intense
+animation, her face full of brightness. Edgar darted off to join
+the group, directly he had shaken hands with the two ladies,
+leaving his mother to subside into one of those new-fangled
+bamboo chairs which she felt assured would leave its basket-work
+impression on her velvet gown.</p>
+
+<p>‘Edgar,’ cried Daphne as he came towards her, ‘did you ever
+hear of such a heathen—a man born on the soil—a very pagan?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is the culprit?’ asked Edgar; ‘and what has he done?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Goring has never seen Ann Hathaway’s cottage.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t believe he knew who Ann Hathaway was till we
+told him,’ said the Rector, with his fat laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘And he has ridden and driven through Shottery hundreds
+of times, and he never stopped to look at the cottage where
+Shakespeare—the most wonderful man in the whole world—wooed
+and won his wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have heard it dimly suggested that she wooed and won
+him,’ remarked Gerald placidly; ‘she was old enough.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are too horrid,’ cried Daphne. ‘Would you be surprised
+to hear that Americans cross the Atlantic—three thousand
+miles of winds and waves and sea-sickness—on purpose to
+see Stratford-on-Avon, and Shottery, and Wilmcote, and Snitterfield?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I could believe anything of a Yankee,’ answered Gerald,
+unmoved by these reproaches. ‘But why Wilmcote? why
+Snitterfield? They are as poky little settlements as you could
+find in any agricultural district.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you ever hear of such hideous ignorance?’ cried Daphne,
+‘and in a son of the soil. You are most unworthy of the honour
+of having been raised in Shakespeare’s country. Why John<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</span>
+Shakespeare was born at Snitterfield, and Mary Arden lived
+with her father at Wilmcote; and it was there he courted her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘John—Mary—oh, distant relations of the poet’s, I suppose?’
+inquired Gerald easily.</p>
+
+<p>‘This is revolting,’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘but he is shamming—he
+must be shamming.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Punish him for his ignorance, whether it is real or pretended,’
+cried Edgar. ‘Make him row us all down to Stratford
+to-morrow morning; and then we’ll walk him over to Shottery,
+and make him give a new gown to the nice old woman who
+keeps the cottage.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A new gown,’ echoed Daphne contemptuously; ‘he ought
+to be made to give her a cow—a beautiful mouse-coloured
+Channel Island cow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll give her anything you like, as long as you don’t bore
+me to death about Shakespeare. I hate sights and lions of all
+kinds. I went through Frankfort without looking at the house
+where Goethe was born.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A depraved desire to be singular,’ said the Rector. ‘I
+think he ought to forfeit a cow to Mrs. Baker. Rhoda, my
+love,’ glancing furtively at his watch, ‘our friends are all here.
+Todd is usually more punctual.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers, Lina, and Mrs. Turchill had strolled out to
+join the others. The prim rustic matron was looking at Daphne
+with astonishment rather than admiration. She was pretty, no
+doubt. Mrs. Turchill had never seen a more transparent complexion,
+or lovelier eyes; but there was a reckless vivacity
+about the girl’s manner which horrified the thoroughly British
+matron.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ said Edgar, ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten my
+mother. Mother, this is Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill drew back a pace or two with extreme deliberation,
+and sank gracefully in the curtsy which she had been
+taught by the Leamington dancing-master—an undoubted
+Parisian—five-and-thirty years ago. After the curtsy she extended
+her hand and allowed Daphne to shake it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come, Mrs. Turchill,’ said the Rector, offering his arm.
+‘Goring, bring Miss Lawford; Turchill will take care of my
+wife; and Daphne’—he paused, smiling at the fair young face
+and slender girlish figure in soft white muslin—‘Daphne shall
+have my other arm, and sit on my left hand. I feel there is a
+bond of friendship between us now that I find she is so fond of
+Shakespeare.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid I know Hamlet’s soliloquies better than I do my
+duty to my neighbour,’ said Daphne, on the way to the dining-room,
+remembering how the Rector used to glower at her under
+his heavy brows when she broke down in that portion of the
+Church Catechism.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers, from her opposite seat at the oval table, had
+a full view of her husband’s demeanour, across the roses and
+maidenhair ferns and old Derby crimson and purple dessert
+dishes. It was rather trying to her to see that he devoted himself
+entirely to Daphne during the pauses of the meal; and
+that, while he as in duty bound provided for all Mrs. Turchill’s
+corporeal needs, and was solicitous that she should do ample
+justice to his wines and his dishes, he allowed her mind to
+starve upon the merest scraps of speech dropped into her ear at
+long intervals.</p>
+
+<p>Nor was Edgar much better behaved to Mrs. Ferrers, for he
+sank into such a slough of despond at finding himself separated
+from Daphne, that his conversational sources ran suddenly dry,
+and Rhoda’s lively inquiries about the plays and pictures he had
+just been seeing elicited only the humiliating fact that she, who
+had not seen them, knew a great deal more about them than he
+who had.</p>
+
+<p>‘What did you think of the Millais landscape?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Was there a landscape by Millais? I thought he was a
+portrait painter.’</p>
+
+<p>This looked hopeless, but she tried again.</p>
+
+<p>‘And Frith’s picture; you saw that of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, I didn’t,’ he replied, brightening; ‘but I saw the people
+looking at it. It was immensely good, I believe. There was a
+railing, and a policeman to make the people move on. My
+mother was delighted. She and another lady trod on each
+other’s gowns in their eagerness to get at the picture. I believe
+they would have come to blows, if it hadn’t been for the policeman.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And there was Miss Thompson’s picture.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; and another crowd. That is the sort of picture
+mother enjoys. I think the harder the struggle is the better
+she likes the picture.’</p>
+
+<p>Gerald and Madoline were sitting side by side, talking as
+happily as if they had been in Eden. All the world might have
+heard their conversation—there were no secrets, there was no
+exchange of confidences—and yet they were as far away from
+the world about them, and as completely out of it, as if they
+had been in the planet Venus, rising so calmly yonder above the
+willows, and sending one tremulous arrow of light deep down
+into the dark brown river. For these two Mrs. Todd’s most
+careful achievements were as nothing. Her <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sole au gratin</i> might
+have been served with horse-radish sauce—or fried onions; her
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vol-au-vent</i> might have been as heavy as suet-pudding; her
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">blanquette</i> might have been bill-sticker’s paste; her <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">soufflé</i> might
+have been flavoured with peppermint instead of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vanille</i>; and
+they would hardly have discovered that anything was wrong.</p>
+
+<p>And what delight it was by-and-by to wander out into the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</span>
+cool garden, leaving the Rector to prose to poor Edgar over
+his Chambertin, and to lose themselves in the shadowy shrubbery,
+where the perfume of golden broom and mock orange
+seemed intensified by the darkness. Daphne sat in the quaint
+old candle-lit drawing-room conversing with the two matrons—Aunt
+Rhoda inclined to lecture; Mrs. Turchill inclined to
+sleepiness, having eaten a more elaborate dinner than she was
+used to, and feeling an uncomfortable tightness in the region of
+her velvet waistband.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar got away from the Rector as soon as he decently
+could, and came to the relief of the damsel.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, mother, how are you and Daphne getting on?’ he
+asked cheerily. ‘I hope you have made her promise to come to
+see you at Hawksyard.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill started from semi-somnolence, and her waistband
+gave a little creak.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be delighted if Madoline will bring her sister to call
+on me some day,’ she replied stiffly, addressing herself to nobody
+in particular.</p>
+
+<p>‘Call on you—some day! What an invitation!’ cried Edgar.
+‘Why, mother, what has become of your old-fashioned hospitality?
+I want Daphne to come and stay with you, and to run
+about the house with you, and help you in your dairy and
+poultry-yard—and—get used to the place.’</p>
+
+<p>Get used to the place! Why should Daphne get used to the
+place? For what reason was a fair-haired chit in a white frock
+suddenly projected upon Mrs. Turchill’s cows and poultry—cows
+as sacred in her mind as if she had been a Hindoo; poultry
+which she only allowed the most trusted of her dependents to
+attend upon? She felt a sudden sinking of the heart, which
+was much worse than after-dinner tightness. Could it be that
+Edgar, her cherished Edgar, was going to throw himself away
+upon such a frivolous chit as this; a mere school-girl, without
+the slightest pretension to deportment?</p>
+
+<p>Daphne all this time sat in a low basket-chair by the open
+window, and looked up at Edgar with calm friendly eyes—eyes
+which were at least without guile when they looked at him.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AFTER MY MIGHT FUL FAYNE WOLD I YOU PLESE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> day after the family dinner was hopelessly wet; so the
+expedition to Shottery, proposed by Edgar Turchill and seconded
+by Daphne, was indefinitely postponed. The summer fleeted
+by, the beautiful bounteous summer, with her lap full of sweet-scented
+flowers; the corn grew tall, the hay was being carted in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</span>
+many a meadow within sound of Stratford bells; and the woods
+began to put on that look of dull uniform green which indicates
+the beginning of the end. For the sisters at South Hill, for
+Gerald Goring and Edgar Turchill, July and August had been
+one long holiday. There was so little in life for these young
+people to do except take their pleasure. Theirs was an existence
+of perpetual rose-gathering; and the roses of life budded
+and bloomed for them with an inexhaustible fertility. Perhaps
+Madoline was the only one among them who had any idea of
+duty. Edgar was an affectionate son, a good master, and a
+liberal landlord, but he had never been called upon to sacrifice
+his own inclinations for the welfare of others, and he had never
+given his mind to any of the graver questions of the day. To
+him it mattered very little how the labouring classes as a body
+were taught and housed, so long as the peasants on his own land
+had decent cottages, and were strangers to want. It irked him
+not whether the mass of mankind were Jews or Gentiles, Ritualists,
+Dissenters, or rank unbelievers, so long as he sat in the old
+cloth-lined family pew on Sunday morning assisting at the
+same service which had been all-sufficient for his father, and
+seeing his dependents deporting themselves discreetly in their
+places in the gallery. His life was a narrow life, travelling in
+a narrow path that had been worn for him by the footsteps of
+his ancestors. He was a good man in a limited way. But he
+had never read the modern gospel, according to Thomas Carlyle,
+which after all is but an expansion of the Parable of the Talents:
+and he knew not that every man must work after some fashion
+or other, and do something for the time in which he lives. He
+was so thoroughly honest and true-hearted, that if the narrowness
+and uselessness of his life had been revealed to him, he
+would assuredly have girded his loins and taken up the pilgrim’s
+staff. Never having had any such revelation he took his pleasure
+as innocently as a school-boy at home for the holidays, and
+had no idea that he was open to the same reproach which that
+man received who had buried the wealth entrusted to him.</p>
+
+<p>He was as near happiness in this bright summer-tide as a
+mortal can hope to be. The greater part of his days were spent
+with Daphne, and Daphne was always delighted. True that
+she was changeable as the light July winds, and that there were
+times when she most unmercifully snubbed him. But to be
+snubbed by her was better than the smiles and blandishments
+of other women. She was given to that coyness and skittishness,
+the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">grata protervitas</i>, which seems to have been the chief
+fascination of the professional beauty of the Augustan era.
+She was as coy as Chloe; coquettish as Glycera; fickle as Lydia,
+who, supposing there was only one lady of that name, and she
+a real personage, was rather too bad. Daphne was half-a-dozen
+girls is one; sometimes welcoming her swain so sweetly that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</span>
+he felt sure she loved him, and the next day turning from him
+with scornful impatience, as if his very presence were weariness
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>He bore it all. ‘Being her slave what could he do,’ etc.
+He had Shakespeare’s sonnets by heart, and was somewhat of
+the slavish lover therein depictured. His Lydia might flout him
+to-day, and he was just as ready to fetch and carry for her on
+the morrow. She had changed, and for the worse, since the
+sweet fresh early summer-tide when they two had breakfasted
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> in the boat-house. She was not so even-tempered.
+She was ever so much more capricious and exacting; and she
+was prone to gloomy intervals which anyone other than a lover
+might have ascribed to sulks. Edgar wondered, not without
+sorrow, at the change; but it was not in him to blame her. He
+made all manner of excuses. Bad health was, perhaps, at the
+root of these discords. She might be a victim to obscure neuralgic
+pains and aches, which she heroically concealed from her
+friends—albeit her fair and fresh appearance belied the supposition.
+Perhaps it was the weather which made her occasionally
+cross. Who could go on in simpering placidity with the thermometer
+at ninety in the shade?</p>
+
+<p>‘And then we spoil her,’ argued Edgar, urging his final plea.
+‘She is so bewitching that one can’t help spoiling her. Madoline
+spoils her. I am an idiot about her; and even Goring, for all
+his contemptuous airs and graces, is almost as easily fooled by
+her as the rest of us. If we were more rational in our treatment
+of her, she would be less faulty. But then her very faults
+are charming.’</p>
+
+<p>It had been, or had seemed to be, an utterly happy summer
+for everybody at South Hill. Two months of splendid weather;
+two months wasted in picnicking, and excursionising, driving,
+boating, lawn-tennis, tea-drinking, journeying to and fro between
+South Hill and Goring Abbey to watch the progress of
+the hot-houses, which, despite the unlimited means of their
+proprietor, progressed with a provoking slowness.</p>
+
+<p>For some little time after Gerald’s arrival Daphne had held
+herself as much as possible in the background. She had tried
+to keep aloof from the life of the two lovers; but this Madoline
+would not suffer.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are to be in all our amusements, and to hear all our
+plans, dear,’ she told her sister one day. ‘I never meant that
+you and I should be less together, or less dear to each other,
+because of Gerald’s return. Do you think my heart is not big
+enough to hold you both?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know it is, Lina. But I fancy Mr. Goring would like to
+have it all to himself, and would soon get to look upon me as
+an intruder, if I were too much with you. You had better
+leave me at home to amuse myself on the river, or to play ball<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</span>
+with Goldie, who is more than a person as to sense and sensibility.’</p>
+
+<p>To this Madoline would not consent. Her love of her
+sister was so tempered with pity, so chastened and softened
+by her knowledge of the shadow that darkened the beginning
+of Daphne’s life, that it was much deeper and stronger than
+the affection common among sisters. She wanted to make up
+to Daphne for all she had lost; for the cruel mother who had
+deserted her in her cradle; for the father’s unjust resentment.
+And then there was the delightful idea that Edgar Turchill,
+that second best of men, whom she had rejected as a husband,
+would by-and-by be her brother; and that Daphne’s future,
+sheltered and cherished by a good man’s devoted love, would
+be as complete and perfect a life as the fairest and sweetest of
+women need desire to live. Madoline had quite made up her
+mind that Edgar was to marry Daphne. That he was passionately
+in love with her was obvious to the meanest capacity.
+Everybody at South Hill knew it except perhaps Daphne herself.
+That she liked him with placid sisterly regard was
+equally clear. And who could doubt that time would ripen
+this sisterly regard into that warmer feeling which could alone
+recompense him for his devotion? Thus, against the girl’s own
+better sense, it became an understood fact that Daphne was
+to be a third in all the lovers’ amusements and occupations,
+and that Mr. Turchill was very frequently to make a fourth in
+the same. To Gerald Goring the presence of these two seemed
+in no wise obnoxious. Daphne’s vivacity amused him, and he
+looked upon his old friend Turchill as a considerably inferior
+order of being, not altogether unamusing after his kind. He
+was not an exacting lover. He accepted his bliss as a settled
+thing; he knew that no rock on Cornwall’s rugged coast was
+more securely based than his hold on Madoline’s affection. He
+was troubled by no jealous doubts; his love knew no hot fits or
+cold fits, no quarrelling for the after bliss of reconciliation.
+There was nothing of the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">grata protervitas</i> in Madoline’s gentle
+nature. Her well-balanced mind could not have stooped to
+coquetry.</p>
+
+<p>August was drawing to its close. It had been a month of
+glorious weather, such halcyon days as made the farmer’s
+occupation seem just the most delightful calling possible for
+man. There was not much arable land within ken of South
+Hill, but what cornfields there were promised abundant crops;
+and one of the magnates of the land—who, in his dudgeon
+against a revolutionary re-adjustment of the game-laws at that
+time looming in the dim future, had rough-ploughed a thousand
+acres or so of his best land rather than let it under obnoxious
+conditions—may have thought regretfully of the corn that
+might have been reaped off those breezy uplands and in those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</span>
+fertile valleys, where at his bidding sprang cockle instead of
+barley. It was a month of holiday-making for everybody—for
+even the labour of the fields, looked at from the outside,
+seemed like holiday-making. Quiet little Stratford, flushed
+with spasmodic life by the arrival of a corps of artillery, tootled
+on trumpets, and daddy-mammyed on drums; while the horn
+of the Leamington coach blew lustily every morning and afternoon,
+and the foxhound puppy at nurse at The Red Horse
+found the middle of the highway no longer a comfortable place
+for his after-dinner nap. It was the season of American tourists,
+doing Stratford and its environs, guide-book in hand, and
+crowding in to The Red Horse parlour, after luncheon, to see
+the veritable chair in which Washington Irving used to sit.</p>
+
+<p>There came a drowsy sunny noontide when the lovers had
+no particular employment for their day. They had been reduced
+to playing billiards directly after breakfast, until Gerald
+discovered that it was too warm for billiards, whereupon the
+four players—Lina, Daphne, Gerald, and Turchill—repaired to
+the garden in search of shade.</p>
+
+<p>‘Shade!’ cried Daphne indignantly. ‘Who wants shade?
+Who could ever have too much of Phœbus Apollo? Not I.
+We see too little of his godlike countenance, and I will never
+turn my back upon him.’</p>
+
+<p>She seated herself on the burnt grass in the full blaze of
+the sun, while the other three sat in the shadow of an immense
+Spanish chestnut, which grew wide and low, making a leafy tent.</p>
+
+<p>‘This is a horrid idle way of spending one’s day,’ said
+Daphne, jumping up with sudden impatience, after they had all
+sat for half an hour talking lazily of the weather and their
+neighbours. ‘Is there nothing for us to do?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, you excitable young person,’ answered Gerald; ‘since
+your restless temper won’t let us be comfortable here, we’ll
+make you exert yourself elsewhere. The river is the only place
+where life can be tolerable upon such a day as this. The nicest
+thing would be to be in it: the next best thing perhaps is to be
+on it. You shall row us to Stratford Weir, Miss Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like it of all things. I am dying for something to
+do,’ responded Daphne, brightening. ‘You’ll take an oar, won’t
+you, Edgar?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course, if you’d really like to go. By-the-by, suppose
+we improve the occasion by landing at Stratford, and walking
+Gerald over to Shottery to see Ann Hathaway’s cottage.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Delicious,’ cried Daphne. ‘It shall be a regular Shakespearian
+pilgrimage. We’ll take tea and things, and have kettledrum
+in Mrs. Baker’s house-place. She’ll let me do what I like,
+I know. And Mr. Goring shall carry the basket, as a punishment
+for his hideous apathy. And we’ll talk to him about
+Shakespeare’s early life all the way.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Shakespeare’s life, forsooth!’ cried Gerald scornfully.
+‘Who is there that knows anything about it? Half-a-dozen
+entries in a parish register; a few traditional sayings of Ben
+Jonson’s; and a pack of sentimentalists—English and German—evolve
+out of their inner consciousness a sentimental biography.
+“We may picture him as a youth going across the
+fields to Shottery: because it is the shortest way, and a man of
+his Titanic mind would naturally have taken it: yes, over the
+same meadows we tread this day: on the same ground, if
+not actually on the same grass.” Or again: “Seeing that
+Apostle-spoons were still in common use in the reign of Elizabeth,
+it may be fairly concluded that the immortal poet used
+one for his bread and treacle: for who shall affirm that he did
+not eat bread and treacle, that the inspired lad of the Stratford
+grammar-school had not the same weaknesses and boyish
+affections as his schoolmates? Who would not love to possess
+Shakespeare’s spoon, or to eat out of Shakespeare’s porringer?”
+That is the kind of rot which clever men write about Shakespeare:
+and I think it is because I have been overdosed with
+such stuff that I have learned to detest the bard in his private
+character.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are a hardened infidel, and you shall certainly carry
+the basket.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What, madam, would you degrade me to a hireling’s office?
+“Gregory, o’ my word, we’ll not carry coals.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘There, you see,’ cried Daphne triumphantly, ‘you can’t live
+without quoting him. He has interwoven himself with our daily
+speech.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because we are parrots, without ideas of our own,’ answered
+Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I am proud of belonging to the soil on which he was
+reared. I wish there was one drop of his blood in my veins. I
+envy Edgar because his remote ancestry claim kin with the
+Ardens. I almost wish I were a Turchill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That would be so easy to accomplish,’ said Edgar softly,
+blushing at his own audacity.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne noticed neither his speech nor his confusion. She
+was all excitement at the idea of an adventurous afternoon,
+were it only a visit to the familiar cottage.</p>
+
+<p>‘Madoline, dearest, may I order them to pack us a really
+nice tea?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, dear, if we are all decided upon going.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It seems to me that the whole thing has been decided for
+us,’ said Gerald, smiling indulgently at the vivacious face, radiant
+in the broad noonday light, the willowy figure in a white
+gown flecked and chequered with sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>‘You order me to row you down the Avon,’ said Daphne,
+‘and I condemn you to a penitential walk to Shottery. You<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</span>
+ought by rights to go barefoot, dressed in a white sheet; only I
+don’t think it would become you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It might be too suggestive of the Turkish bath,’ said Gerald.
+‘Well, I submit, and if needs be I’ll carry the basket, provided
+you don’t plague me too much about your poet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I move an amendment,’ interposed Edgar. ‘Sir Vernon is
+to take the chair at Warwick at the Yeomanry dinner, so Miss
+Lawford is off duty. Let us all go on to Hawksyard and dine
+with the old mother. It’ll delight her, and it won’t be half bad
+fun for us. There’ll be the harvest moon to light you home,
+Madoline, and the drive will be delicious in the cool of the——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Cockchafers,’ cried Gerald. ‘They are particularly cool at
+that hour—come banging against one’s nose with ineffable
+assurance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Say you’ll come, Lina,’ pleaded Edgar, ‘and I’ll send one of
+Sir Vernon’s stable-boys to Hawksyard on my horse with a line
+to the mater, if I may.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should enjoy it immensely—if Gerald likes, and if you are
+sure Mrs. Turchill would like to have us.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I’d better be out of it. I’m not a favourite with
+Mrs. Turchill,’ said Daphne bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Daphne!’ cried Turchill ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Edgar!’ cried Daphne, mocking him. ‘Can you lay
+your hand upon your heart, and declare, as an honest man, that
+your mother likes me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps not quite so much as she will when she knows more
+of you,’ answers the Squire of Hawksyard, as red as a turkey-cock.
+‘The fact is, she so worships Madoline that you are a
+little thrown into the shade.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course. How could anyone who likes Madoline care
+about me? It isn’t possible,’ retorted Daphne, with a somewhat
+bitter laugh. ‘If I were one of a boisterous brood of underbred
+girls I might have a chance of being considered just endurable;
+but as Lina’s sister I am as the shadow to the sunlight; I am
+like the back of a beautiful picture—a square of dirty canvas.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you are fishing for compliments, you are wasting trouble,’
+said Gerald. ‘It is not a day on which any man will rack his
+brains in the composition of pretty speeches.’</p>
+
+<p>‘May I write the note? May I send the boy?’ asked Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>Lina looked at her lover, and finding him consentient, consented;
+whereupon Edgar hurried off, intensely pleased, to
+make his arrangements.</p>
+
+<p>So far, he had been disappointed in the hope of seeing
+Daphne a frequent guest at Hawksyard, the petted companion
+and plaything of his mother. He had made for himself an
+almost Arcadian picture: Daphne basking on the stone bench
+in the Baconian garden; amusing herself with the poultry;
+even milking a cow on occasion; and making junkets in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</span>
+picturesque old dairy. He had fancied her upstairs and downstairs,
+in my lady’s chamber; unearthing all Mrs. Turchill’s
+long-hoarded treasures of laces and ribbons, kept to be looked
+at rather than to be worn; sorting the house-linen, which would
+have stocked a Swiss hotel, and which ran the risk of perishing
+by slow decay upon its shelves or ever it was worn by usage.
+He had pictured her accepted as the daughter of the house;
+waking the solemn old echoes with her glad young voice; fondling
+his dogs; riding his hunters in the green lanes, and across
+the level fields. She was pining to ride; but of the six horses
+at South Hill there was not one which Sir Vernon would allow
+her to mount.</p>
+
+<p>The pleasant picture was as yet only a phantasm of the
+mind. Mrs. Turchill had not yet taken to Daphne. She was
+a good woman—truthful, honest, kindhearted—but she had her
+prejudices, and was passing obstinate.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t deny her prettiness,’ she said, when Edgar tried to
+convince her that not to admire Daphne was a fault in herself,
+‘but she is not a girl that I could ever make a friend of.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s because you don’t take the trouble to know her,
+mother. If you would ask her here oftener——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope I know my place, Edgar,’ said the mistress of the
+Grange stiffly. ‘If Miss Daphne Lawford wishes to improve my
+acquaintance she knows where to find me.’</p>
+
+<p>But Daphne had taken no pains to secure to herself the advantages
+of Mrs. Turchill’s friendship. There was no particular
+reason why she should go to Hawksyard: so, after one solemn
+afternoon call with Madoline—on which occasion they were
+received with chilling formality in the best drawing-room: an
+apartment with an eight-foot oak dado, deeply-recessed mullioned
+windows, and a state bedroom adjoining—Daphne went
+there no more. And now here was a splendid opportunity of
+making her at home in the dear old house, and of showing her
+all the surroundings which its master loved and cherished.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>‘<span class="smcap">Best of Mothers</span>,’ wrote Edgar, ‘I am going to take you
+by storm this afternoon. We—Lina, Daphne, Mr. Goring, and
+I—are going to Shottery, and propose driving on to Hawksyard
+afterwards. Get up the best dinner you can at so short a notice,
+and give us your warmest welcome. You had better put out
+some of Hirsch’s Liebfraumilch and a little dry cham. for Goring.
+The girls drink only water. Let there be syllabubs and
+junkets and everything pastoral. Don’t ask anyone to meet
+them,’ added Edgar, with a dread of having the local parson
+projected on his love-feast; ‘we want a jolly, free-and-easy
+evening. Dinner at eight.—Your loving</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Ted</span>.’<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>This brief epistle was handed to Mrs. Turchill just as she
+was sitting down to luncheon. Her first idea was to strike.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</span>
+Her son might have brought home half-a-dozen of his bachelor
+friends, and it would have been a pleasure to her to kill fatted
+calves and put out expensive wines. She would have racked her
+brain to produce an attractive <em>menu</em>, and taxed the resources of
+poultry-yard and dairy to the uttermost. But to be bidden to
+prepare a feast for Madoline, who had rejected her paragon son,
+for the rival who had supplanted him, and for Daphne, whom
+she most cordially disliked, was something too much. She sat at
+her simple meal bridling and murmuring to herself in subdued
+revolt. She was tempted to ring for Deborah and confide her
+wrongs to that sympathetic ear; but discretion and her very
+genuine love for her son prevailed; and instead of summoning
+Deborah, she sent for the cook, and announced the dinner party
+as cheerfully as if it were the fulfilment of a long-cherished
+desire.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne ran down to the boat-house before the others had
+finished luncheon, and with Bink’s assistance made her boat a
+picture of comfort. Gerald was excused from the burden of the
+basket, as that could be conveyed in the carriage which was to
+pick up the party at Shottery and take them on to Hawksyard.
+The old name of the boat had been erased for ever by workmanlike
+hands the day after Daphne’s futile attempt to obliterate it.
+‘Nora Creina’ now appeared in fresh gilding above the deposed
+emperor.</p>
+
+<p>‘You ought not to have altered it,’ said Gerald. ‘There was
+something original in calling your boat after a bloodthirsty
+lunatic. “Nora Creina” is the essence of Cockneyism.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was the boat-builder’s suggestion,’ Daphne answered
+indifferently. ‘What’s in a name?’</p>
+
+<p>‘True! Your boat by any other name would go as fast.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had to wait some time by the water’s edge before the
+other three came quietly strolling across the meadow. She had
+been sculling gently up and down under the willows while she
+waited.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now then, Empress,’ said Gerald, when he had arranged
+Lina’s shawls, and settled her comfortably in her place, ‘you are
+to sit beside your sister. Edgar and I will take an oar apiece,
+while you and Lina amuse ur conversation.’</p>
+
+<p>This nickname of Empress was a reminiscence of Daphne’s
+adventure in Fontainebleau Forest. It matched very well with
+her occasional imperiousness, and the association was known
+only to Gerald Goring and herself. It amused him when he was
+in a mischievous humour to call her by a name which she never
+heard without a blush.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought I was to row you,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Empress; as it’s all down stream we of the sterner sex
+will relieve you of the duty. Besides, you could never row
+comfortably in that go-to-meeting get-up,’ said Gerald, looking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</span>
+critically at Daphne’s straw-coloured Indian silk, embroidered
+with scarlet poppies and amber wheat-ears, and fluffy with soft
+lace about the neck and arms, and the Swiss milkmaid’s hat with
+its wreath of cornflowers.</p>
+
+<p>‘I could not wear a boating-dress, as we are to dine with
+Mrs. Turchill,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘You might have worn what you liked,’ protested Edgar
+eagerly, ‘but you look so lovely in that yellow gown that I shall
+be pleased for my mother to see you in it. She is weak about
+gowns. I believe she has a wardrobe full of gorgeous attire,
+which she and Deborah review once a week, but which nobody
+ever wears.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The gowns will do for the chair-covers of a future generation,’
+said Gerald; ‘all the chair-covers in my mother’s morning-room
+are made out of the Court trains of her grandmothers and
+great-aunts. I believe a Court mantle in those days consumed
+two yards and a half of stuff.’</p>
+
+<p>He had taken off his coat, and bared his arms to above the
+elbow.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a splendid stroke you pull still, Goring!’ said Edgar
+admiringly, ‘and you have the wrist of a navvy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘One of my paternal inheritances,’ answered Gerald coolly;
+‘you know my father was a navvy.’</p>
+
+<p>At which frank speech everybody in the boat blushed except
+the speaker.</p>
+
+<p>‘He must have been a glorious fellow,’ faltered Edgar, after
+an awkward pause.</p>
+
+<p>‘Any man who can make a million of money, and keep it
+without leaving speck or flaw upon his good name, must be a
+glorious fellow,’ answered Gerald, with more heartiness than was
+usual to him. ‘My father lived to do good to others as well as
+to himself, and went down to his grave honoured and beloved.
+I wish I were more like him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s the nicest thing I ever heard you say,’ exclaimed
+Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Approbation from Sir Hubert Stanley——,’ murmured
+Gerald; ‘I am beginning to feel proud of myself.’</p>
+
+<p>They landed at the boat-builder’s below the bridge, hard by
+that decayed old inn which must have seen courtlier company
+than the waggoners and wayfarers who drink there now. Then
+they crossed Sir Hugh Clopton’s granite bridge, and walked
+through the quiet town to the meadows that lead to Shottery.
+It is but a mile from the town to the village, a mile of meadow
+pathway, every step of which is haunted by ghostly footsteps—the
+Sacred Way of English literature.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s no use telling me not to talk about him,’ cried Daphne,
+as she jumped lightly from the top of a stile, the ascent whereof
+tested the capacity of a fashionable frock; ‘I cannot tread this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</span>
+ground without thinking of him. I am positively bursting with
+the idea of him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Which is the fortunate he whose image haunts you?’ asked
+Gerald, with that languid upward twitch of his dark brows which
+gracefully expressed a mild drawing-room cynicism. ‘Do these
+fields suggest grave thoughts about tenant-right or game-laws, or
+the land question generally? Is it Beaconsfield or Gladstone
+whose <em>eidolon</em> pursues you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t be disgusting,’ cried Daphne. ‘<em>Can</em> one think
+of anybody in these meadows except——’</p>
+
+<p>‘The inevitable William. A man does not live near Stratford
+with impunity. He must be dosed. Well, child, what are
+you bursting to say?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have been thinking what a happiness it is to know that
+the dear creature travelled so little,’ responded Daphne; ‘and
+that whether he talks of Bohemia, or France, or Germany, Rome,
+Verona, Elsinore, or Inverness——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Somebody wrote a treatise an inch thick to show that
+Shakespeare may have gone to Scotland with the king’s players,
+but I fancy he left his case as hypothetical as he found it,’ interjected
+Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Whether he talks of Athens—or Africa—he really means
+Warwickshire,’ pursued Daphne. ‘It is his own native county
+that is always present to his mind. Florizel and Perdita make
+love in our meadows. There is the catalogue of flowers just as
+they bloom to-day. And Rosalind’s cottage was in a lane near
+the few old oaks which still remain to show where Arden Forest
+once stood. And poor Ophelia drowned herself in one of the
+backwaters of our Avon. I can show you the very willow growing
+aslant the brook.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A backwater isn’t a brook,’ murmured Edgar mildly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I allow that local colour is not our William’s strong point,’
+answered Gerald. ‘Not being a traveller, he would have done
+better had he never ventured beyond the limits of his Warwickshire
+experience; for in that case he would not have imagined
+lions in the streets of Rome, or a sea-coast in Bohemia.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Wait till you write a play or a novel,’ retorted Daphne,
+‘and you’ll find you’ll have to adapt yourself to circumstances.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s exactly what your divine bard did not do. He
+adapted circumstances to suit his plays.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘LOVE IS A THING, AS ANY SPIRIT, FREE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Past</span> a garden or two and a few cottages; a long garden
+wail with heavy coping, shutting in treasures of fruit and vegetables;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</span>
+an old inn; a new school-house, built at the corner of a
+lane shaded by as stately an avenue of elms as any nobleman
+need desire for the approach to his mansion. And yet mansion
+there is none at the end of this verdant aisle. The lane is only
+an accommodation road leading to somebody’s farm. A youthful
+monitor is trying to drill some small boys in front of the
+school-porch, and the small boys are defying him; whereat a
+shrill-voiced woman, unseen in the interior of the school, calls
+out an occasional word of reproof. All the houses in the little
+village belong to the past—they have the grace of a day that is
+dead. In a farm garden a buxom servant in a kilted petticoat
+is feeding a family of gigantic hens and chickens with something
+thick and slab out of an iron pot.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne and her companions felt that there could have been
+little change since the old romantic Elizabethan time. The village
+lay off the beaten tracks. Three or four modern houses,
+scattered about here and there in spacious gardens, were the
+only addition time had made to Shottery.</p>
+
+<p>They walked briskly along the narrow road, across the bridge
+where the shallow streamlet came tumbling picturesquely over
+gray stones. Then a few paces, and before them stood the little
+block of cottages which genius has transformed into a temple.
+Whether the building was originally one house, it were difficult
+to decide. The levels are different; but a variety in levels was
+the order of that day. The whole block is a timber-framed
+structure—a panelled house, the panels filled with dab and
+wattle. Jutting casements, diamond-paned, look out upon an
+ancient garden, and an ancient well. Beside the house and
+garden there is an old orchard, where on this day a couple of
+sheep are placidly nibbling the sweet grass. The cottage is
+almost smothered in greenery. Honeysuckle, jasmine, roses,
+hang about the walls as if they loved them. The old timber
+porch is curtained with flowers.</p>
+
+<p>The South Hill carriage was waiting in the lane when Daphne
+and her companions arrived. The basket had been duly delivered
+over to Mrs. Baker. She was standing at the door awaiting
+them with a smiling welcome.</p>
+
+<p>‘So glad to see you, ladies. The kettle’s on the boil, and you
+can have your tea as soon as you please.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks, you dear thing,’ cried Daphne; ‘but isn’t it almost
+sacrilege to drink tea in his room?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It isn’t everybody I’d let do it, miss; not any of those
+Americans; though I must say they’re uncommonly civil, and
+know more about Shakespeare than the common run of English
+do, and are more liberal in their ways too,’ added Mrs. Baker,
+with a lively remembrance of half-crowns from Transatlantic
+visitors.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mrs. Baker,’ began Daphne in a solemn tone, laying a little<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</span>
+tawny-gloved hand lightly on the collar of Gerald’s coat, ‘you
+see this man?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, miss, and a very nice-looking gentleman he is for anybody
+to look at,’ answered Mrs. Baker smirkingly, making up
+her mind that the tall dark-eyed gentleman must belong to one
+or other of the two young ladies.</p>
+
+<p>‘He may be nice to the outward eye,’ said Daphne gravely,
+‘but he is dust and ashes inside. He is anathema maranatha, or
+he ought to be, if there were anybody in Warwickshire who
+knew how to anathematise him properly. He lives in this county—within
+twelve miles of this house—and he has never been to
+see the ingle-nook where Shakespeare courted his wife. I’m
+afraid it won’t make the faintest impression upon his callous
+mind when I tell him that you are a lineal descendant of the
+Hathaways, and that this house has never been out of a Hathaway’s
+possession since Shakespeare’s time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I appreciate the lady for her own sake, and don’t care a jot
+for her ancestry,’ answered Gerald, with a friendly air.</p>
+
+<p>They followed Mrs. Baker into the house-place, where all
+was cool and shadowy after the glare of sunshine outside. It
+was a low but somewhat spacious room, with casements looking
+back and front; recessed casements, furnished with oaken seats,
+one of which was known as the lovers’ seat; for here, the lovers
+of the present day argued by analogy, William and Ann must
+have sat to watch many a sunset, and many a moonlit sky.
+Here they must have whispered their foolish lovers’ talk in the
+twilight, and shyly kissed at parting. The fire-place was in a
+deep recess, a roomy ingle-nook where half-a-dozen people could
+have gathered comfortably round the broad open hearth. On
+one side of the ingle-nook was a cupboard in the wall, known
+as the bacon-cupboard; on the other the high-backed settle.
+Opposite the fire-place there was a noble old dresser—polished
+oak or mahogany—with turned legs and a good deal of elaborate
+carpentry: a dresser which was supposed to be Elizabethan,
+but which was suggestive rather of the Carolian period. The
+dark brown panels made an effective background for an old
+willow dinner-service.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne made Mr. Goring explore every inch of the house
+which Mrs. Baker was able conveniently to show. She led him
+up a breakneck little staircase, showed him lintels and doorposts,
+and locks and bolts, which had been extant in Shakespeare’s
+time; made him admire the queer little carved four-poster which
+was even older than the poet’s epoch; and the old fine linen
+sheet, richly worked by patient fingers, which had been in the
+family for centuries, only used at a birth or a death. She excused
+him from nothing; and he bore the infliction with calm
+resignation, and allowed her to lead him back to the house-place
+in triumph.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</span></p>
+
+<p>Madoline and Edgar Turchill were sitting in the lovers’ seat,
+talking, after having unpacked the basket, and made all preparation
+for tea, assisted by Mrs. Baker’s modest handmaiden.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, Mr. Goring,’ said Daphne, when she and Gerald and
+the old lady had rejoined the others, ‘how do you feel about
+that Channel Island cow?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I am content,’ answered Gerald, laughing at her. ‘I
+submit to the extortion; you carry matters with such a high
+hand that if you were to demand all my flocks and herds I
+should hardly feel surprised.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mrs. Baker,’ said Daphne, with a businesslike air, ‘this
+gentleman is going to give you a cow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, miss, you don’t mean it, surely!’ murmured Mrs. Baker,
+overcome with confusion.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; a lovely fawn-coloured, hazel-eyed Alderney. Don’t
+refuse her. He can as well afford to give you a cow as I can to
+give you a neck-ribbon. When would you like the animal sent
+home? To-morrow morning? Yes, of course; to-morrow
+morning. You hear, Mr. Goring? And now you may consider
+yourself forgiven, and I’ll show you the visitors’-book and all the
+interesting autographs.’</p>
+
+<p>They went over to the table near the window, and turned
+the leaves of that volume! Alas! how many a hand that had
+written in it was now dust. Here was the signature of Charles
+Dickens, nearly thirty years old, and pale with age. But the
+descendant of the Hathaways remembered the day when it was
+written, and recalled the visit with pride.</p>
+
+<p>‘He took the book out into the garden, and sat on the stone
+slab over the well to write his name,’ she said. ‘I remember
+how full of life and fun he and Mr. Mark Lemon were; he was
+laughing as he wrote, and he looked at everything, and was so
+pleased and so pleasant.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Walter Scott’s name was in an older book. Both of these
+were as dead—and as undying—as Shakespeare. And compared
+with these two immortal names all the rest of the signatures in
+the big book were zero.</p>
+
+<p>It was the merriest tea-party imaginable. Mrs. Baker’s best
+Pembroke table had been brought into the middle of the room;
+her best teapot and cups and saucers were set out upon it.
+Cakes and hot-house fruit had been liberally supplied by Mrs.
+Spicer. Daphne whispered in her sister’s ear a request that Mrs.
+Baker might be invited to join them, to which Madoline nodded
+a smiling assent. Was not the descendant of the Hathaways a
+lady by right of her gentle manners and ancient descent? She
+belonged to a class that is an honour to the land—the honest
+independent yeoman who tills the soil his forefathers cultivated
+before him. The birth and death sheet in the oak chest upstairs
+was like a patent of nobility. And yet perhaps not one of these<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</span>
+agricultural Hathaways had ever enjoyed as large an income as
+a first-class mechanic in a manufacturing town—a man who dies
+and leaves not a rap behind him to show that he was once respectable.
+They had been upheld in their places by the pride of race,
+which the mechanic knows not.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Baker was installed in the place of honour in front of
+the tea-tray, and asked everyone in her nice old-fashioned way
+whether their tea was to their liking. Upon being coaxed to
+talk she told stories about the defunct Hathaways, and explained
+how the house that had once been all one dwelling-place had
+come to be divided.</p>
+
+<p>It was Daphne and she who supplied the conversation. The
+two young men looked on amused; Edgar openly admiring the
+bright changeful face under the little Swiss hat. Lina was
+pleased that her sister should be so innocently glad.</p>
+
+<p>‘O, how happy I am,’ cried Daphne suddenly, in a pause of
+the talk, clasping her hands above her head in a kind of ecstasy.
+‘If it could only last!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should it not last?’ asked Edgar, in his matter-of-fact
+way.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald looked at her gravely, with a puzzled look. Yes; this
+was the girl who had stood in the dazzling sunshine beside the
+lake at Fontainebleau, in whose hand he had read the forecast
+of an evil fate.</p>
+
+<p>‘God help her!’ he thought, ‘she is so impulsive—such a
+creature of the moment. How is such an one to travel safely
+through the thorny ways of life? Happily there seems little
+fear of thorniness for her footsteps. Here is my honest Turchill
+dying for her—and just the kind of man to make her an excellent
+husband, and give the lie to palmistry. Yet it seems a
+common place fate; almost as vulgar as the Italian warehouse in
+Oxford Street.’</p>
+
+<p>He sat musing thus in the lazy afternoon atmosphere, and
+watching Daphne with something of an artistic rather than an
+actually friendly interest. It seemed a shallow nature that must
+be always expressing itself in speech or movement. There could
+be no depth of thought allied with such vivacity—keenness of
+feeling, perhaps, but for the moment only.</p>
+
+<p>Nobody was in a hurry to leave the cottage. Tea-drinking
+is of all sensualities the most intellectual. The mind is refreshed
+rather than the body. There was nothing coarse in the meal.
+The golden tinge of the almond pound-cake—a master work of
+Mrs. Spicer’s—contrasted with the purple bloom of grapes and
+blue-gages, the olive tint of ripe figs.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are making such a tremendous meal that I’m afraid we
+shall none of us do justice to my mother’s dinner,’ remonstrated
+Edgar at last, ‘and that will make her miserable.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A quarter to seven,’ said Gerald, stealing a glance at a little<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</span>
+effeminate watch. ‘Don’t you think it is time we should descend
+from this Shakespearian empyrean to common earth?’</p>
+
+<p>This was the signal for a general move. The heavy, comfortable-looking
+old carriage-horses had been walked up and
+down in shady places, while the portly coachman dozed on his
+box, and the more vivacious footman execrated the flies. And
+now the landau bowled briskly along the smooth high road to
+Hawksyard, containing as cheerful a quartette as ever went out
+to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline was delighted to see her sister so happy, delighted
+at Edgar’s obvious devotion. She had no doubt that his love
+would be rewarded in due course. It is in a woman’s nature to
+be grateful for such honest affection, to be won by such disinterested
+fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>The brazen hands of the old clock at Hawksyard indicated
+a quarter to eight, as the carriage drove across the bridge, and
+under the arched gateway into the quadrangular garden, with
+its sunk pathways, and shallow steps, and border-lines of crumbling
+old stone. Mrs. Turchill was standing on the threshold—a
+dignified figure in a gray poplin gown and old thread-lace cap
+and ruffles—ready to receive them. She gave Madoline her
+blandest smile, and was tolerably gracious to the rival who had
+spoiled her son’s chances; but she could not bring herself to be
+cordial to Daphne. Her silk bodice became as rigid as an Elizabethan
+corset when she greeted that obnoxious damsel. She had
+a shrewd suspicion that it was for her sake the fatted calf had
+been killed, and all the available cream in the dairy squandered
+upon sweets and made dishes, with a reckless disregard of next
+Saturday’s butter-making. Yet as Daphne shyly put out her
+hand to accept that cold greeting, too sensitive not to perceive
+the matron’s unfriendliness, Mrs. Turchill could but own to herself
+that the minx was passing lovely. The brilliant gray eyes,
+shadowed with dark lashes; the dark brows and golden hair;
+the complexion of lilies and roses; the sensitive mouth; the
+play of life and colour in a face that varied with every thought—yes;
+this made beauty which even Mrs. Turchill could not
+deny.</p>
+
+<p>‘Handsome is that handsome does,’ thought the dowager.
+‘God forbid that my boy should trust the happiness of his life
+to such a butterfly.’</p>
+
+<p>Inwardly rebellious, she had nevertheless done her duty as a
+good housekeeper. The old oak-dadoed drawing-room was looking
+its prettiest, brightened by oriental jars and bowls of scarlet
+geraniums and creamy roses, lavender and honeysuckle. The
+silver chandelier and fire-irons were resplendent with recent
+polishing. The diamond-paned lattices were opened to admit
+the scent of heliotrope and mignonette from the garden on the
+other side of the moat; while one deeply-recessed window looking<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</span>
+into the quadrangle let in the perfume of the old-world
+flowers Francis Bacon loved.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar insisted upon showing Daphne the house during the
+ten minutes before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have only been here once,’ he said, ‘and my mother
+did not show you anything.’</p>
+
+<p>After the two girls had taken off their hats in the state bed-chamber
+next the drawing-room—a room whose walls were
+panelled with needlework executed by an ancestress of Edgar’s
+in the reign of Charles the First—they all went off to explore
+the house; ascending a steep secret stair which they entered
+from a door in the panelling of the dining-room; exploring long
+slippery corridors and queer little rooms that opened mysteriously
+out of other rooms; and triangular dressing-closets
+squeezed into a corner between a chimney and an outer-wall;
+laughing at the old furniture: the tall toppling four-post bed-steads;
+the sage-green tapestry; the capacious old grates, or
+still older brazen dogs; the inimitable Dutch tiles.</p>
+
+<p>‘It must be heavenly to live in such a funny old house,’ cried
+Daphne, as they came cautiously down the black oak staircase,
+slippery as glass, pausing to admire a ramshackle collection of
+Indian curios and Japanese pottery on the broad window-ledge
+half-way down.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you would only try it,’ murmured Edgar close in her ear,
+and looking ineffably sheepish as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Again the all-significant words fell unheeded. She skipped
+lightly down the remaining stairs, protesting she could get accustomed
+to them in no time.</p>
+
+<p>‘“So light a foot will ne’er wear out the everlasting flint,”’
+said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Didn’t I tell you so? You can’t live without quoting him,’
+cried Daphne triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner went off merrily. It was a capital dinner in a
+good old English style, ponderous but excellent. There were
+none of those refinements which distinguished the board over
+which Mrs. Ferrers presided. The attempts at elegance smacked
+of a banished era. A turbot decorated with sliced lemon and
+barberries; a befrilled haunch, exhibiting its noble proportions
+in a heavy silver dish; a superabundance of creams and jellies
+and trifles and syllabubs; an elaborate dessert lying in state on
+the sideboard, to be slowly and laboriously transferred to the
+polished oak after the cloth was drawn; and the coachman to
+help wait at table. The whole thing was rustic and old-fashioned,
+and Edgar was afraid Daphne was secretly turning it all into
+ridicule. Yet she seemed happy, and she said so much in
+praise of Hawksyard and of the perfect order in which the
+house was kept, that Mrs. Turchill’s heart began to soften
+towards her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘You seem fond of the country, and of countrified ways,
+Miss Daphne,’ said the matron relentingly. ‘Yet I should have
+thought a young lady like you would have been pining for London,
+and balls and theatres.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I never was at a dance in my life,’ answered Daphne, ‘and
+only once at a theatre, and that was the great opera-house in
+Paris. I don’t think I should ever care to go to a meaner
+theatre. My thoughts went up so high that night, I shouldn’t
+like to let them down again by seeing trumpery.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The London theatres are very nice,’ said Mrs. Turchill, not
+quite following Daphne’s idea. ‘But they are rather warm in
+summer. Yet one likes to go up to town in the height of the
+season. There is so much to see.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother’s constitution is cast-iron when she gets to London,’
+said Edgar. ‘She is up at six every morning, and goes to the
+picture-galleries as soon as the doors are opened; and does her
+morning in Hyde Park, and her afternoon in Regent Street,
+shopping, or staring in at the shop-windows; and eats her dinner
+at the most crowded restaurant I can take her to; and winds up
+at the theatre. I believe she’d accept a lobster-supper in the
+Haymarket if I were to offer one.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Has Miss Daphne Lawford never been in London?’ asked
+Mrs. Turchill.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, please don’t call me miss. I am never anything but
+Daphne to my friends.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very kind,’ answered Mrs. Turchill, stiffening; ‘but
+I don’t think I could take so great a liberty with you on such a
+short acquaintance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Short acquaintance!’ echoed Daphne, laughing. ‘Why, you
+must have known me when I was in my cradle.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill grew suddenly red, as if the idea were embarrassing.</p>
+
+<p>‘I was invited to your christening,’ she said; ‘but—afterwards—there
+were circumstances—Sir Vernon was so often
+abroad. We did not see much of you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you wish me to feel at home at Hawksyard you must call
+me Daphne, please,’ said the girl gently.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill did not wish her to feel at home at Hawksyard;
+yet she could not refuse compliance with so gracious a
+request.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies rose to retire, Edgar opening the door for them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you want any more wine, Turchill?’ asked Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, not particularly; but you’ll try that other claret, won’t
+you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not a drop of it. I vote we all adjourn to the garden.’</p>
+
+<p>So they all went out together into the twilit quadrangle,
+where the old-fashioned flowers were folding their petals for
+night and slumber, while the moon was rising above a cluster<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</span>
+of stone chimneys. Mrs. Turchill walked once round the little
+enclosure, discoursing graciously with Madoline, and then confessed
+to feeling chilly, and being afraid of the night air; although
+a very clever doctor, with somewhat new-fangled ideas,
+had told her that the air was as good by night as by day, provided
+the weather were dry.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I’ll go indoors and sit in the drawing-room till you
+come in to tea,’ she said. ‘I hope you won’t think me rude.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline offered to go with her, but this Mrs. Turchill would
+not allow.</p>
+
+<p>‘Young people enjoy a moonlight stroll,’ she said; ‘I liked
+it myself when I was your age. There’s no occasion for any of
+you to hurry. I shall amuse myself with <cite>The Times</cite>. I haven’t
+looked at it yet.’</p>
+
+<p>The four being left together naturally divided themselves
+into two couples. Gerald and Lina seemed fascinated by the
+flowery quadrangle, with its narrow walks, and ancient dial, on
+which the moon was now shining. They strolled slowly up and
+down the paths; or lingered beside the dial; or stood looking
+down at the fish-pond. Daphne’s restless spirit soon tired of
+these narrow bounds.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is there nothing else to look at?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘There are the stables, and the dairy, and the farm-yard.
+But you must see those by daylight; you must come here for a
+long day,’ said Edgar eagerly. ‘Would you like to see the garden
+on the other side of the moat?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Above all things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is very flat,’ said Edgar apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>‘All the better for tennis.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, the lawn would make a magnificent tennis-ground.
+We might have eight courts if we liked. But it is a very commonplace
+garden after South Hill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t apologise. I am sure it is nice; a dear old-fashioned
+sort of garden—hollyhocks, and sunflowers, and things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My old gardener is rather proud of his hollyhocks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Precisely; I knew he would be. And that horrid MacCloskie
+will hear of nothing but the newest inventions in flowers.
+He gives us floral figures in Euclid; floral hearthrugs sprawling
+over the lawn, as if one of the housemaids had taken out a
+Persian rug to dust it, and had forgotten to take it in again.
+He takes tremendous pains to build up beds like supper-dishes—ornamental
+salads, don’t you know—and calls that high-art
+gardening. I would rather have your hollyhocks and sunflowers,
+and the old-fashioned scented clematis climbing about everywhere
+in a tangled mass of sweetness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m glad you like antiquated gardens,’ said Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>They went under the archway, which echoed the sound of
+their footsteps, and round by a gravel walk to the spacious lawn,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</span>
+and the long border which was the despair of the gardeners when
+they tried to fill it, and which yet provided flowers enough to
+keep all the sitting-rooms bright and sweet with summer bloom.
+The moon was high above Hawksyard by this time: a glorious
+harvest moon, pouring down her golden light upon tree and
+flower, and giving intensity to the shadows under the wall. The
+waters of the moat looked black, save where the moonbeams
+touched them; and yonder under the tall spreading walnut
+boughs the gravel walk was all in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne paced the lawn, disputing as to how many tennis-courts
+one might have on such on extensive parallelogram. She
+admired the height of the hollyhocks, and regretted that their
+colour did not show by moonlight. The sunflowers appeared to
+better advantage.</p>
+
+<p>‘What awful stories poets tell about them!’ said Daphne.
+‘Just look at that brazen-faced creature, smirking at the moon;
+just as if she had never turned her head sunwards in her life.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was in a sentimental mood, and inclined to see things
+from a sentimental point of view</p>
+
+<p>‘It mayn’t be botanically true,’ he said, ‘but it’s a pretty idea
+all the same;’ and then he trolled out in a fine baritone:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘No, the heart that has truly loved never forgets,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent3">But as truly loves on to the close;</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">As the sunflower turns on her god, when he sets,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent3">The same look which she turned when he rose.’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>‘What’s the use of singing that when you know it isn’t true?’
+cried Daphne contemptuously. ‘Do you suppose a stiff-necked
+thing like that, with a stalk a quarter of an inch in diameter,
+could turn and twist from east to west every day, without wringing
+its head off? The idea is obviously absurd. What lovely
+old walnut-trees!’ she exclaimed, looking across the lawn. ‘Centuries
+upon centuries old, are they not?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe they were planted soon after George the Third
+came to the throne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that all? They look as old as the Wrekin.’</p>
+
+<p>They strolled across the wide lawn, and in among the shadows
+of the old trees. The cows were moving stealthily about in the
+meadow on the other side of the fence, as if sleep were the last
+thing they ever thought of.</p>
+
+<p>‘And you really like Hawksyard?’ demanded Edgar earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Like it! I think it is quite the most delicious place I ever
+saw. Those high dadoes; these deep-set stone-mullioned windows;
+those eccentric little bedrooms; that secret staircase, so
+sweetly suggestive of murder and treason. The whole place is
+so thoroughly original.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is one of the few moated granges left in England,’ said
+Edgar with an air of conscious merit.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘It is quite too lovely.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, do you really mean what you say?’ he asked with
+sudden intensity. ‘Are you only talking like this to please me—out
+of kindness?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If I have a fault it is a habit of blurting out what I think,
+without reference to other people’s feelings. I am thoroughly
+in earnest about Hawksyard.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then be its mistress,’ exclaimed Edgar, taking her hand,
+and trying to draw her towards him; ‘be queen of my house,
+darling, as you have long been sovereign of my heart. Make
+me the happiest man that ever yonder old roof sheltered—the
+proudest, the most entirely blest. Daphne, I am not poetical, or
+clever. I can’t find many words, but—I love you—I love you.’</p>
+
+<p>She laughed in his face, a clear and silvery peal—laughed him
+to absolute scorn; yet without a touch of ill-nature.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Edgar, this is too much,’ she cried. ‘A few months
+ago you were fondly, devotedly, irrevocably in love with Lina.
+Don’t you remember how we sympathised that afternoon in the
+meadows? This is the sunflower over again: first to the sun
+and then to the moon. No, dear Edgar, never talk to me of
+love. I have a real honest regard for you. I respect you. I
+trust you as my very brother. It would spoil all if you were to
+persist in talking nonsense of this kind.’</p>
+
+<p>She left him, planted there—mute as a statue—frozen with
+mortification, humiliation, despair.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘He either fears his fate too much,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent3">Or his deserts are small,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Who dares not put it to the touch,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent3">To win or lose it all.’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He had tried his fate—hopefully, confidently even—lured on
+by her deceptive sweetness; and all was lost.</p>
+
+<p>She had run lightly off. She was on the other side of the
+lawn before he stirred from the attitude in which she left him;
+his hands clenched, his head bent, his eyes staring stupidly at
+the gravel walk.</p>
+
+<p>‘She does not care a straw for me,’ he said to himself, ‘not
+a straw. And I thought she had grown fond of me. I thought
+I had but to speak.’</p>
+
+<p>A friendly hand touched him lightly on the shoulder. It
+was Gerald, the man for whom Fate had reserved all good
+things—unbounded talents, unbounded wealth, the love of a
+perfect woman.</p>
+
+<p>‘Cheer up, old fellow,’ said Gerald heartily. ‘Forgive me if
+I heard more than you intended me to hear. Mrs. Turchill
+sent me in quest of you and Daphne, and I came up—just as
+you—’</p>
+
+<p>‘Just as I made an ass of myself,’ interrupted Edgar. ‘It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</span>
+doesn’t matter. I don’t a bit mind your knowing. I have no
+pride of that kind. I am proud of loving her, even in vain.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be down-hearted, man. A girl of that kind must be
+played as an expert angler plays a frisky young salmon. She
+has refused you to-night; she may accept you three months
+hence.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She laughed at me,’ said Edgar, with deepest despondency.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is her disposition to laugh at all things. You must have
+patience, man; patience and persistence. “My love is but a
+lassie yet.” Thy beloved one still delights in the green fields;
+her tender neck cannot bear the yoke. Wait, and she will turn
+to thee—as—as the sunflower turns to the sun,’ concluded Gerald,
+having vainly sought a better comparison.</p>
+
+<p>‘It doesn’t,’ cried Edgar dejectedly. ‘That is what we have
+just been talking about. The sunflower is a stiff-necked impostor.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘NOT FOR YOUR LINAGE, NE FOR YOUR RICHESSE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> two young men walked up and down under the walnut-trees
+for nearly an hour, Gerald Goring playing the unaccustomed
+part of consoler. He liked Edgar Turchill with an
+honest liking. There was a shade of condescension, of unconscious
+patronage, in the feeling; but it was thoroughly sincere.
+The Saxon squire was of course distinctly on a lower intellectual
+level than the man of mixed race—the man whose father
+had thrust himself into the front ranks of life by the sheer
+force of will and brains, unaided by conventional training of
+any kind; whose mother had been the last development of a
+family reared in courts and palaces. Compared with the quicksilver
+that flowed in his own veins, Edgar Turchill’s blood was
+a fluid that smacked of the vegetable kingdom—watery stuff
+such as oozes out of a turnip or a cabbage when the cook-maid
+cuts it. Yet the man could feel, and so keenly, that Gerald
+was touched with tender pity.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be down-hearted, old fellow,’ he said, walking slowly
+under the spreading boughs, with his hand resting affectionately
+upon Turchill’s shoulder. ‘Be sure things will work round in
+time. She is a pert capricious minx; but she cannot help being
+fond of you, if you are only patient.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I would wait for her as Jacob waited for Rachel, if I were
+as sure of winning her,’ answered Edgar; ‘but I am afraid
+there’s no chance. If she detested me; if the very sight of me
+were odious to her; there might be some hope. But she likes
+me—she is even fond of me; in a calm sisterly way. If you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</span>
+knew how sweet she was to me in the spring before you came—she
+had no fits of temper then—when I taught her sculling;
+how she used to boil a kettle down in the boat-house and——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; it was awfully nice of her,’ interjected Gerald somewhat
+impatiently, having heard the story of these boat-house
+breakfasts several times before.</p>
+
+<p>‘If she were less kind I should have more hope,’ pursued
+Edgar. ‘I think I shall go away—out of the country—where I
+shall never see her lovely face. I have a great mind to go to
+India and shoot big game.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And stick pigs?—a curious cure for the heart-ache. No,
+old fellow; stay at home and bide your time. That’s your
+game.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I could never look her in the face after to-night,’ said
+Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nonsense, man! Treat this capricious minx as coolly as if
+nothing had ever been said about love and despair. Let her
+think to-night’s avowal the consequence of too much wine—a
+mere after-dinner outburst of sentiment. Look her in the face,
+forsooth! If you are a wise man, you may make her ashamed
+to look you in the face before she is six months older. You
+have spoilt her by your flatteries and footings and compliances.
+Give her a little of the rough side of your bark. She professes
+to care for you as a brother, quotha! Treat her with brotherly
+discourtesy—brotherly indifference. Be as candid about her
+faults and follies as if you were her very brother. When she
+finds you can live without her she will begin to languish for the
+old adulation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I love her too well to be such a Jesuit,’ said Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pshaw! do you suppose Petruchio did not love Kate? He
+knew there was but one way of taming his fair shrew, and he
+used the wisdom Heaven had given him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I couldn’t act a part where she is concerned,’ argued Edgar.
+‘She would find me out in a moment.’</p>
+
+<p>They talked for a long time upon the same subject, wearing
+the theme threadbare; travelling backwards and forwards over
+the same line of argument, while the moon climbed higher and
+higher in the cloudless blue; and in the end Edgar acknowledged
+that it would be a foolish thing to leave his farm before
+the harvest was all in; or his mother, before she had enjoyed
+her annual fortnight at the sea-side; or to uproot himself violently
+from his native soil in the vain hope of curing his heart-wound.
+He had tried foreign air for his malady before, and
+foreign air had done nothing for him; and this time he believed
+the wound to be ever so much deeper. A lifetime in a strange
+country would hardly heal it.</p>
+
+<p>At last Edgar consented to be led despondently back to the
+house, which he had left a little while ago with his heart beating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</span>
+high, full of hope and delight. They found the three ladies
+seated in the quaint old drawing-room, dimly lighted by a dozen
+or so of candles in the silver sconces against the wall. There was
+nothing so distinctly modern as a moderator-lamp at Hawksyard.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill was enlarging mildly in a lowered voice upon
+the various shortcomings of her servants, who, although old
+servants and infinitely better than other people’s, were yet so
+far human in their faultiness as to afford food for conversation.
+Madoline was listening with polite interest, throwing in an
+encouraging word now and then, which was hardly needed,
+for Mrs. Turchill’s monologue would have gone on just the
+same without it. Daphne, exhausted by a long day’s vivacity,
+had fallen asleep, bolt erect in a straight-backed cherry-wood
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring remembered that day at Fontainebleau when
+he had told himself that Daphne asleep would be a very commonplace
+young person; yet, as he looked at her to-night, he was
+fain to own that even in slumber she was lovely. Was it some
+trick of candle-light and shadow which gave such piquancy to
+the delicate features, which gave such expression to the dark-pencilled
+brows and drooping eyelids? The bright hair, the pale
+yellow gown, the exquisite fairness of the complexion, gave a
+lily-like loveliness to the whole figure. So pale; so pure; so
+little earthly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor Edgar!’ sighed Mr. Goring. ‘He is very much to be
+pitied. How desperately I could have loved such a girl, if I had
+not already adored her opposite. And how I would have made
+her love me,’ he added, remembering all their foolish talk, and
+how easy it had seemed to him to play upon that sensitive
+nature.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am afraid the tea is cold,’ said Mrs. Turchill. ‘You
+gentlemen have been enjoying your cigars in the walnut walk, I
+suppose.’</p>
+
+<p>The clatter of cups and saucers startled Daphne. She
+opened her eyes, and saw Edgar looking at her with piteous
+reproachfulness. She could calmly sleep just after giving him
+his death-wound. There was a refinement of cruelty in such
+indifference. Then he suddenly remembered Gerald’s advice,
+and tried to seem equally at his ease.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll wager mother has been bemoaning the vices of the new
+dairymaid, and the ingratitude of the old one in going away to
+be married,’ said he. ‘That’s what sent you to sleep, wasn’t it,
+Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I was tired. We had such a long afternoon,’ she answered
+wearily.</p>
+
+<p>‘The carriage has been waiting half an hour,’ said Madoline.
+‘I think we had better put on our hats, and then say
+good-night.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Goring will drive home with you, of course,’ said Mrs.
+Turchill.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; I am going to see them safe home, Mrs. Turchill,’
+answered Gerald. ‘I am to stay at South Hill to-night, and
+hear Sir Vernon’s account of the Yeomanry dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, who had just been talking of eternal banishment,
+was longing to ask for the fourth seat in the landau. The walk
+home between midnight and morning would be delightful.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should have liked to hear about the dinner,’ he began
+dubiously; and then meeting Gerald’s eye, quailed beneath its
+friendly ridicule, and said no more.</p>
+
+<p>He escorted Daphne to the carriage, helped to arrange her
+wraps with a steady hand, though his heart beat passionately all
+the time; and bade her good-night in so thoroughly cheery a
+voice, that she wondered a little to find how easily he had taken
+her rejection of him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor dear Edgar!’ she said to herself as they drove along
+the shadowy Warwickshire lane, through the calm beauty of
+the summer night, ‘I daresay it was only an impulse of the
+moment—or perhaps it was the moon—that made him propose
+to me. Yet he seemed awfully in earnest, and I was afraid I
+might have offended him by laughing. But, after being devoted
+to Lina, and making me the confidante of his grief, it was
+certainly rather impertinent to offer himself to me. But he is
+a dear good-natured creature all the same, and I should be sorry
+to offend him.’</p>
+
+<p>She was silent all the way home; sitting in her comfortable
+corner of the carriage, wrapped to her chin in her soft white
+shawl, to all appearance asleep. Yet not once did her senses
+lose themselves in slumber. She was listening to the happy
+lovers, as they talked of the past—that part of the past which
+they had spent asunder. Gerald had been talking of a long
+mule-ride in Switzerland under just such a moonlit sky. It was
+no tremendous mountain ascent, only a ride from Evian up to a
+village at the foot of the Dent d’Oche, to look down upon Lake
+Leman and its lovely shores bathed in moonlight; the long dark
+range of the Jura rising like a wall on the western side;
+picturesque villages on the banks gleaming in the silver light,
+with their old church towers half hidden by masses of dark
+foliage; one lonely boat with its twin sails skimming like a
+swallow across the moonlit water.</p>
+
+<p>‘It must have been delicious,’ said Lina.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was very nice—except that you were not there. “But
+one thing want these banks of Rhine.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘And did you really miss me at such moments, Gerald?
+When you were looking at some especially lovely scene, had you
+really and truly a feeling that I ought to have been by your
+side?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Really and truly; the better half of myself was missing.
+Pleasure was only a one-sided affair, as that moon will appear
+next week—an uncomfortable-looking fragmentary kind of
+planet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I love to hear of your travels, Gerald,’ said Lina softly.
+‘Have you told me all about them, do you think?’</p>
+
+<p>‘All that’s worth telling, I fancy,’ he answered lightly, with
+an involuntary glance at Daphne to see if she were really asleep.</p>
+
+<p>There was no quiver of the dark lashes, no movement in
+the restful figure. Her face had that pale unearthly look which
+all faces have in the moonlight. A pain shot through his heart
+as he thought that it was thus she would look in death. It was
+one of those involuntary flashes of thought which sometimes
+flit across a mind unacquainted with actual sorrow—the phantom
+of a grief that might be.</p>
+
+<p>When they arrived at South Hill Daphne wished her sister
+and Mr. Goring a brief good-night, and went straight to her
+room. She had no motive for awaiting her father’s home-coming.
+He would have nothing to say to her. His only
+greeting would be a look which seemed to ask what business she
+had there. It was on the stroke of eleven. Madoline and
+Gerald walked up and down the gravel drive in front of the
+house, waiting for the carriage from Warwick; and during this
+interval Mr. Goring told his sweetheart how Edgar Turchill had
+been rejected by Daphne. Madoline was deeply distressed by
+this news. She had made up her mind that her sister’s life was
+to be made happy in this particular way. She had imagined a
+fair and peaceful future in which she would be living at the
+Abbey, and Daphne at Hawksyard—not a dozen miles apart.
+And now this wilful Daphne had rejected the moated grange and
+its owner, and that fair picture of the future had no more
+reality in it than a mirage city seen from the dreary sands of a
+desert.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought she was attached to him,’ said Madoline, when
+she had been told the whole story. ‘She has encouraged him
+to come here; she has always seemed happy in his company.
+Half her life, since she came from school, has been spent with
+him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘In sober earnest, darling, I’m afraid this fascinating little
+sister of yours is an arrant coquette. She has flirted with Edgar
+because there was no one else to flirt with.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t say that, Gerald, for I know you are mistaken,’
+answered Madoline eagerly. ‘Daphne is no flirt.
+She looks upon Edgar as a kind of adopted brother. I have
+always known that, but I fancied that this friendly trustful
+feeling of hers would lead in time to a warmer attachment.
+As to coquetry, she does not know what it means. She is
+thoroughly childlike and innocent.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Possibly, dearest. Yet in her childishness she knows how
+to fool a man as thoroughly as Ninon de l’Enclos could have
+done after half a century’s practice. However, I hope Edgar
+will stand his ground and bring this wayward puss to her senses.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I cannot understand how she can help liking him,’ mused
+Madoline. ‘He is so good, so frank, and brave, and true.’</p>
+
+<p>‘All noble qualities, and deserving a woman’s affection.
+Yet the sentimental history of the human race tends to show
+that a man endowed with all those virtues is not the most
+dangerous to the fair sex.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gerald,’ said Lina, ‘I have an idea that pride is at the
+bottom of Daphne’s refusal.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why pride? What kind of pride?’</p>
+
+<p>‘She has harped a good deal, at different times, upon her
+penniless position; has called herself a pauper, half in joke,
+half in earnest, but with a bitterness of tone that wounded me.
+She may think that as Edgar is well off, and she has no fortune,
+she ought not to accept him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest love, what an utterly quixotic idea. The only
+thought a pretty young woman ever has about a man’s wealth
+is that when she shall be his wife she can have more frocks than
+the common run of women. There is no sense of obligation.
+She is so conscious of the boon she bestows that she accepts his
+filthy lucre as a matter of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think that would be Daphne’s way of thinking.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, if she were wholly your sister I should say not.
+But as she is only your half-sister, I can suppose her only about
+half as good again as the ruck of womankind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very rich, are you not, Gerald?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, yes; it would take a large amount of idiocy on my
+part to spoil the income my father left me. It might be done,
+no doubt, if I went into the right circles. My ruin would be
+only a question of so many years and so many racehorses.
+But while I live as I am living now, there is very little chance
+of my becoming acquainted with want.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know, dear; and I don’t think it was for the sake of my
+fortune you chose me, was it, Gerald?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest love, I only wish some old nurse would turn
+up on your wedding morning and tell you that you are not the
+Lady Clare, so that I might prove to you how little wealth or
+position influenced my choice. I think I know what you are
+going to say, Lina. As I have more money than you and I
+together—indulge our caprices as we may—are ever likely to
+spend, why not give your fortune to Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear Gerald, how good of you to guess my wish! I should
+like to divide my fortune with my sister when I come of age.
+I don’t want to give her all, for half would be ample. And
+I am so accustomed to the idea of independence, that I should<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</span>
+hardly like to be a pensioner even upon you. Will you speak
+to the lawyers, Gerald, and find out how the gift had better be
+made?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, dear; I’ll settle everything with the men of law. It
+seems to me that you can do just what you like, as soon as you
+come of age. But you’ll have to wait till then.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only ascertain that it can be done, Gerald, and then I can
+tell Daphne, and she will no longer fancy herself a pauper. It
+may influence her in her conduct to Edgar.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It may,’ answered Gerald dubiously; ‘but somehow I don’t
+think it will. Edgar must win the game off his own bat.’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The sisters were alone together in Madoline’s morning-room
+after breakfast next day. Gerald had gone to the Abbey to
+look after the builders, and settle various matters with his
+steward. Daphne was sitting half in and half out of the
+balcony, idle as was natural to her, but listless and discontented-looking,
+which was a state of mind she did not often exhibit.</p>
+
+<p>There was no Edgar this morning, and she missed her faithful
+slave.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he meant never to come to South Hill any more;
+in which case it would be difficult for her to get rid of her life.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ began Madoline gravely, ‘I have heard something
+which has made me very unhappy; which has altogether surprised
+and disappointed me. I am told that Edgar proposed to
+you last night, and that you refused him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did he send you the news in a telegram?’ asked Daphne,
+flaming red. ‘I don’t see how else you could have heard it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No matter how I heard it, dear. It is the truth, I suppose.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; it is the truth. But I despise him for telling you,’
+answered Daphne angrily.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was not he who told me. It was Gerald, who by accident
+overheard the end of your conversation with Edgar, and
+who——’</p>
+
+<p>‘What! he has been interfering, has he?’ cried Daphne,
+looking still more angry. ‘It is supremely impertinent of him
+to busy himself about my affairs.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne! Is that the way you speak of my future husband—your
+future brother?’</p>
+
+<p>‘He has no right to dictate whom I am to accept or reject.
+What can it matter to him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘He does not presume to dictate: but it does matter a great
+deal to him that my sister should choose the path in life which
+is most likely to lead to happiness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How can he tell which path will lead me to happiness?
+Does he suppose that I am going to have a husband chosen
+for me—as if I were a wretched French girl educated in a
+convent?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘He thought—just as I thought—that you could hardly help
+liking such a thoroughly good fellow as Edgar; a man so devoted
+to you; so unselfish; such a good son.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What have I to do with his virtues? I don’t care a straw
+for him, except as a friendly sort of creature who will do anything
+I ask him, and who is very nice to play tennis or billiards
+with. He ought not to be offended at my refusing him. It
+would have been all the same had he been anyone else. I shall
+never marry.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But why not, Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, for no particular reason: except perhaps that I am too
+fond of my own way, and shouldn’t like a master.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, there is something in your tone that alarms me.
+It is so unnatural in a girl of your age. While you were at
+Asnières, did you ever see anyone—you were such a child, that
+it seems foolish to ask such a question—but was there anyone
+at Asnières whom——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Whom I fell in love with? No, dearest, there was no one
+at Asnières. Madame Tolmache was most judicious in her
+selection of masters. I don’t think the most romantic school-girl,
+fed upon three-volume novels, could have fancied herself
+in love even with the best-looking of them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t make you out, Daphne. Yet I think you might
+be very happy as Edgar Turchill’s wife. It would be so nice
+for us to be living in the same county, within a few miles of
+each other.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, that would be nice; and it would be nicer to be at
+Hawksyard than to stay at South Hill when you are gone. Yet
+you see I have too much self-respect to perjure myself, and
+pretend to return poor Edgar’s affection.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have been thinking, Daphne, that perhaps some sense of
+mistaken pride may stand between you and Edgar.’</p>
+
+<p>And then, falteringly, ashamed of her own generosity,
+Madoline told her sister how she meant to divide her fortune.</p>
+
+<p>‘What!’ cried Daphne, turning pale; ‘take his money?
+Not a sixpence. Never speak of it—never think of such a thing
+again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Whose money, dear? It is mine, and mine alone. I have
+the right to do what I like with it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you dispose of it without asking Mr. Goring’s leave—without
+consulting him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hardly, because I love him too well to take any step in life
+without asking his advice—without confiding fully in him. But
+he goes with me in this heart and soul, Daphne; he most
+thoroughly approves my plan.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very good—he is very generous—but I will never
+consent to accept sixpence out of your fortune. You may be
+as generous to me as you like—as you have always been, darling.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</span>
+You may give me gloves and frocks and pocket-money, while
+you are Miss Lawford: but to rob you of your rights; to lessen
+your importance as Mrs. Goring; to feel myself under an obligation
+to your husband—not for all this wide world. Not if
+money could make me happy—which it could not,’ she added
+with a stifled sob.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, are you not happy?’ questioned Lina, looking at
+her with sudden distress. ‘My bright one, I thought your life
+here was all gladness and pleasure. You have seemed so happy
+with Edgar, so thoroughly at your ease with him, that I fancied
+you must be fond of him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Should I be thoroughly at my ease with a man I loved,
+unless—unless our attachment were an old story—a settled
+business—like yours and Mr. Goring’s?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why will you persist in calling him Mr. Goring?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, he is such a grand personage—the owner of an abbey,
+with cloisters, and half a mile of hot-houses—I could not bring
+myself to call him by his christian-name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘As if the abbey and the hot-houses made any difference!
+Well, darling, I am not going to worry you about poor Edgar.
+You must choose your own way of being happy. I would not
+for all the world that you should marry a man you did not love;
+but I should have been so glad if you could have loved Edgar.
+And I think, dear, that unintentionally—unconsciously even—you
+have done him a wrong. You have led him to believe you
+like him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And so I do like him, better than anyone in the world—after
+my own flesh and blood.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, dear. But he has been led to hope something more
+than that. I fear he will feel his disappointment keenly.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nonsense, Lina. Don’t you know that six months ago he
+was still suffering from his disappointment about you? and now
+you imagine he is going to break his heart for me. A heart so
+easily transferred cannot be easily broken. It is a portable
+article. No doubt he will carry it somewhere else.’</p>
+
+<p>She kissed her sister and ran out of the room, leaving
+Madoline anxious and perplexed, yet not the less resolved to
+endow Daphne with half her wealth as soon as she came of
+age.</p>
+
+<p>‘Providence never intended that two sisters should be so
+unequally circumstanced,’ she said to herself. ‘Willy-nilly,
+Daphne must accept what I am determined to give her. The
+lawyers will find out a way.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘NO MAN MAY ALWAY HAVE PROSPERITEE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Edgar Turchill</span> did not go to the other end of the world
+to hide his grief and mortification at this second overthrow of
+his fondest hopes. He absented himself from South Hill for
+nearly a month, yet so contrived as that his absence should not
+appear the result of pride or anger. Mrs. Turchill’s annual sea-side
+holiday was as much an institution as the opening of Parliament,
+or the Derby: and she expected on all such occasions to
+be escorted and accompanied by her only son. She liked a
+fashionable watering-place, where there was a well-dressed crowd
+to be seen on parade or pier; she required to have her leisure
+enlivened by a good brass band; and she would accept nothing
+less in the way of lodgings than an airy bay-windowed drawing-room
+in the very best part of the sea front.</p>
+
+<p>‘If I am not to come to the sea-side comfortably I would
+rather stay at home,’ she said to her confidante Deborah; an
+axiom which Deborah received as respectfully as if it had been
+Holy Writ.</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course, mum. Why should you come away from Hawksyard
+to be cramped or moped?’ said Deborah. ‘You’ve all you
+can wish for there.’</p>
+
+<p>Such murmurings as these had arisen when Edgar, sick to
+death of Brighton and Eastbourne, Scarborough and Torquay,
+had tempted his mother to visit some more romantic and less
+civilised shore; where the accommodation was of the rough-and-ready
+order, and where there was neither parade nor pier for the
+exhibition of fine clothes to the music of brazen bands. For
+picturesque scenery Mrs. Turchill cared not a jot. All wild and
+rugged coasts she denounced sweepingly, as dangerous to life and
+limb, and therefore to be avoided. The wildest bit of scenery
+she could tolerate was Beachy Head; and even that grassy
+height she deemed objectionable. Nor did she appreciate any
+watering-place which could not boast a smart array of shop-windows.
+She liked to be tempted by trumpery modern Dresden;
+or to have her love of colour gratified by the latest invention in
+bonnets and parasols. She liked a circulating library of the old-fashioned,
+Miss Burney type; where she could dawdle away an
+hour looking at new books and papers, soothed by the sympathetic
+strains of a musical-box. She liked to have her son well-dressed
+and in a top-hat, in attendance upon her during her
+afternoon drive in the local fly, along a smooth chalky high-road
+leading to nowhere in particular. She liked to attend local concerts,
+or to hear Miss Snevillici, the renowned Shakespearian
+elocutionist, read the Trial Scene in the ‘Merchant of Venice,’
+followed by Tennyson’s ‘Queen of the May.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</span></p>
+
+<p>To poor Edgar this sea-side holiday seemed always a foretaste
+of purgatory. It was ever so much worse than the fortnight’s
+hard labour in London, for in the big city there were sights
+worth seeing; while here, at the stereotyped watering-place, life
+was one dismal round of genteel inactivity.</p>
+
+<p>But this year Edgar was seized with a sudden desire to hasten
+the annual expedition.</p>
+
+<p>‘Mother, I think this lovely weather must break up before
+long,’ he said briskly, with a laborious affectation of cheerfulness,
+as he sat at dinner with his parent on the day after Daphne’s
+cruelty. ‘What should you say to our starting for the sea-side
+to-morrow?’</p>
+
+<p>‘To-morrow! My dear Edgar, that would be quite impossible.
+I shall want a week for packing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A week! Surely Deborah could put your things into a
+portmanteau in six hours as easily as in six days.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t know what you are talking about, my dear. A
+lady’s wardrobe is so different from a man’s. All my gowns will
+want looking over carefully before they are packed. And I
+must have Miss Piper over from Warwick to do some alterations
+for me. The fashions change so quickly nowadays. And some
+of my laces will have to be washed. And I am not sure that I
+shall not have to drive over to Leamington and order a bonnet.
+I should not like to disgrace you by appearing on the parade
+with a dowdy bonnet.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar sighed. He would have liked to go to some wild
+Welsh or Scottish coast, far from beaten tracks. He would
+have liked some sea-side village in the south of Ireland—Dunmore,
+or Tramore, or Kilkee; some quiet retreat nestled in a
+hollow of the cliffs, where as yet never brass band nor fashionable
+gowns had come; a place to which people came for pure
+love of fine air and grand scenery, and not to show off their
+clothes or advertise their easy circumstances. But he knew that
+if he took his mother to such a place she would be miserable;
+so he held his peace.</p>
+
+<p>‘Where would you like to go this year?’ he said presently.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I have been considering that point, Edgar. Let me
+see now. We went to Brighton last year——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ sighed Edgar, remembering what a tread-mill business
+the lawn had seemed to him; how ineffably tiresome the Aquarium;
+how monotonous the shops in the King’s Road, and the
+entertainments at the Pavilion.</p>
+
+<p>‘And to Scarborough the year before.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ with a still wearier sigh.</p>
+
+<p>‘And the year before that to Eastbourne; and the year before
+that to Torquay. Don’t you think we might go to Torquay
+again this year? I hear it is very much improved.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Very much built upon, I suppose you mean, mother. More<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</span>
+smoky chimneys, more hotels, more churches, longer streets. I
+should think, judging by what it had come to when we saw it,
+that by this time Torquay must be a very good imitation of
+Bayswater. However, if you like Torquay——’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is one of the few places I do like.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then let it be Torquay, by all means. I’ll tell you what I’ll
+do, mother. I’ll run down to Torquay to-morrow, find some
+nice lodgings for you—I think by this time I know exactly what
+you want in that way—and engage them for any day you like to
+name.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s very kind of you, Edgar. But be sure you get some
+reference as to the landlady’s character, so that you may be certain
+there has been no fever case in the house during the last
+twelvemonth. And it would be as well to get a local architect
+to look at the drains. It would be a guinea well spent.’</p>
+
+<p>‘All right, mother; I’ll do anything you like. I am longing
+for a blow of sea-air.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But it will be at least a week before I can come. What
+will you do with yourself in the meantime?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, I shall contrive to amuse myself somehow. I might go
+on to Dartmouth, and charter a boat, and go up the Dart. I
+want very much to see the Dart. Only say on what day I may
+expect you at Torquay.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Am I to travel alone, Edgar?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ll have Deborah. And the journey won’t be difficult.
+You’ll join the express at Swindon, don’t you know——’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you think I can trust to Deborah’s care of the luggage,’
+said Mrs. Turchill dubiously. ‘She’s very steady.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Steady! Well she ought to be at her age. You’ve only to
+get the luggage labelled, you see, mother——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I never trust to that,’ answered the matron solemnly. ‘I
+like Deborah to get out at every station where the train stops,
+and see with her own eyes that my luggage is in the van. Railway
+people are so stupid.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar did not envy Deborah. Having thus adroitly planned
+an immediate departure he was off soon after daybreak next
+morning, and arrived at Torquay in time for dinner. He perambulated
+the loneliest places he could find all the evening, brooding
+over his disappointment, and wondering if there were any
+foundation for Gerald Goring’s idea that Daphne was to be won
+by him even yet. He slept at The Imperial, and devoted the
+next morning to lodging hunting; till his soul sickened at the
+very sight of the inevitable housemaid, who can’t answer the most
+general inquiry—not so far as to say how many bedrooms there
+are in the house, without reference to the higher powers—and
+the inevitable landlady, who cannot make up her mind about the
+rent till she has asked how many there are in family, and
+whether late dinners will be required. Before sundown, however,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</span>
+after ascending innumerable flights of stairs, and looking
+into a dismal series of newly-furnished rooms, he found a suite
+of apartments which he believed would satisfy his mother and
+Deborah; and having engaged the same for a period of three
+weeks, he went down to the water’s edge, to a spot where boating
+men most did congregate, and there negotiated the hire of
+a rakish little yawl, just big enough to be safe in a summer
+sea. In this light craft he was to sail at six o’clock next morning
+with a man and a boy.</p>
+
+<p>‘How Daphne would enjoy knocking about this lovely coast
+in just such a boat!’ he thought. ‘If she were my wife, I would
+buy her as pretty a yacht as any lady could desire, and she
+and I would sail half round the world together. She must be
+tired of the Avon, poor child.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was very tired of the Avon. Never had the days of
+her life seemed longer or drearier than they seemed to her just
+now, when her faithful slave Edgar was no longer at hand to
+minister to her caprices. A strange stillness seemed to have
+fallen upon South Hill. Sir Vernon was laid up with that suppressed
+gout which Daphne fancied was only another name for
+unsuppressed ill-temper, so closely did the two complaints seem
+allied. At such times Madoline was more than ever necessary
+to his well-being. She sat with him in the library; she read to
+him; she wrote his letters; and was in all things verily his right
+hand. The most pure and perfect filial love sweetened an office
+which would have seemed hard to an ungrateful or cold-hearted
+daughter. Yet in the close retirement of the stern-looking businesslike
+chamber, with its prim bookshelves and standard literature—not
+a book which every decently-read student does not
+know from cover to cover—she could but remember the bright
+summer days that were done; the aimless wanderings in meadow
+and wood; the drives to Goring Abbey; the tea-drinkings in the
+cloisters or in the gardens; the happy season which was gone.
+The knowledge that this one happy summer, the first she and
+Gerald had ever spent together as engaged lovers, was ended and
+over, made her feel as if some part of her own youth had gone
+with it—something which could never come again. It had been
+such an utterly happy period; such peerless weather; such a fair
+gladsome earth, teeming with all good things—even the farmers
+ceasing to grumble, and owning that, for once in a way, there
+was hope of a prosperous harvest. And now it was over; the
+corn was reaped, and sportsmen were tramping over the stubble;
+the plough-horses were creeping slowly across the hill; the sun
+was beginning to decline soon after five-o’clock tea; breathings
+of approaching winter sharpened the sweet morning breezes;
+autumnal mists veiled the meadows at eventide.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring had gone to Scotland to shoot grouse. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</span>
+seemed to Daphne, prowling about gardens and meadows with
+Goldie in a purposeless manner that was the essence of idleness,
+as if the summer had gone in a breath. Yesterday she was here,
+that glorious, radiant, disembodied goddess we call Summer—yesterday
+she was here, and all the lanes were sweetened with
+lime-blossoms, and the roses were being wasted with prodigal
+profusion, and the river ran liquid gold; and to sit on a sunny
+bank was to be steeped in warm delight. To-day there were
+only stiff-looking dahlias, and variegated foliage, and mouse-coloured
+plants, and house-leek borders, in the gardens where
+the roses had been; and to sit on a grassy bank was to shiver
+or to sneeze. The river had a dismal look. There had been
+heavy rains within the last few days, and the willowy banks were
+hidden under dull mud-coloured water. There was no more
+pleasure in boating.</p>
+
+<p>‘You may oil her, or varnish her, or do anything that is
+proper to be done with her before you put her away for the
+winter, Bink,’ Daphne said to her faithful attendant; ‘I shan’t
+row any more this year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lor, miss, we may have plenty more fine days yet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t care for that. I am tired of rowing. Perhaps I
+may never row again.’</p>
+
+<p>She went into luncheon yawning, and looking much more
+tired than Madoline, who had been writing letters for her father
+all the morning.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish I were a hunting young woman, Lina,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I should have something to look forward to in the
+winter.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you could only employ yourself more indoors, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do I not employ myself indoors? Why, I play billiards
+for hours at a stretch when I have anyone to play with. I
+practised out-of-the-way strokes for an hour and a half this
+morning.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sure, dear, you would be happier if you had some
+more feminine amusements; if you were to go on with your
+water-colour painting, for instance. Gerald could give you a
+little instruction when he is here. He paints beautifully. I’m
+sure he would be pleased to help you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, dear; I have no talent. I like beginning a sketch;
+but directly it begins to look horrid I lose patience; and then I
+begin to lay on colour in a desperate way, till the whole thing is
+the most execrable daub imaginable; and then I get into a rage
+and tear it into a thousand bits. It’s just the same with my
+needlework; there always comes a time when I get my thread
+entangled, and begin to pucker, and the whole business goes
+wrong. I have no patience. I shall never finish anything. I
+shall never achieve anything. I am an absolute failure.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, if you only knew how it pains me to hear you talk
+of yourself like that——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I won’t do it again. I would not pain you for the
+wealth of this world—not even to have it always summer, instead
+of a dull, abominable, shivery season like this.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Gerald says it is lovely in Argyleshire; balmy and warm;
+almost too hot for walking over the hills.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is enjoying himself, I suppose,’ said Daphne coldly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; he is having capital sport.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shooting those birds that make our dining-room smell so
+nasty every evening, and helping to stock Aunt Rhoda’s larder.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He does not intend to stay after the end of this month.
+He will be home early in October.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne did not even affect to be interested. She was feeding
+Goldie, who was allowed to come in to luncheon when Sir
+Vernon was not in the way.</p>
+
+<p>‘I had a letter from Mrs. Turchill this morning,’ said Lina;
+‘she is enjoying herself immensely at Torquay. Edgar is very
+attentive and devoted to her, going everywhere with her. He is
+a most affectionate son.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And a good son makes a good husband, doesn’t he, Lina?
+Is that idea at the bottom of your mind when you talk of his
+goodness to his very commonplace mother?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t want to talk of him, Daphne, to any one who values
+him so little as you do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I value him very much—almost as much as I do Goldie—but
+not quite, not quite, my pet,’ she added reassuringly to the
+dog, lest he should be jealous. ‘I have missed him horribly;
+no one to tease; no one to talk nonsense with. You are so
+sensible that I could not afford to shock you by my absurdities;
+and Mr. Goring is so cynical that I fancy he is always laughing.
+I miss Edgar every hour of the day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And yet——’</p>
+
+<p>‘And yet I don’t care one little straw for him—in the kind
+of way you care for Mr. Goring,’ said Daphne, with a sudden
+blush.</p>
+
+<p>Lina sighed and was silent. She had not abandoned all
+hope that Daphne would in time grow more warmly attached to
+the faithful swain, whose society she evidently missed sorely in
+these dull autumnal days, during which the only possible excitement
+was a box of new books from Mudie’s.</p>
+
+<p>‘More “Voyages to the North Pole”; more “Three Weeks
+on the Top of the Biggest Pyramid”; more “Memoirs of Philip
+of Macedon’s Private Secretary,”’ cried Daphne, sitting on the
+ground beside the newly-arrived box, and tossing all the instructive
+books on the carpet, after a contemptuous glance at
+their titles. ‘Here is Browning’s new poem, thank goodness!
+and a novel, “My Only Jo.” Told in the first person and present<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</span>
+tense, no doubt; nice and light and lively. I think I’ll
+take that and Browning, if you don’t mind, Lina; and you shall
+have all the Travels and Memoirs.’</p>
+
+<p>With the help of novels and poetry, and long rambles even
+in the wild showery weather, waterproofed and booted against
+the storm, and wearing a neat little felt wide-awake which
+weather could not spoil, Daphne contrived to get through her
+life somehow while her faithful slave was away. Was it indeed
+he whom she missed so sorely? Was it his footfall which her
+ear knew so well; his step which quickened the beating of her
+heart, and brought the warm blood to her cheek? Was it his
+coming and going which so deeply stirred the current of her
+life? Life had been empty of delight for the last three weeks;
+but was it Edgar’s absence made the little world of South Hill
+so blank and dreary? In her heart of hearts Daphne knew too
+well that it was not. Yet Edgar had made an important element
+in her life. He had helped her, if not to forget, at least
+to banish thought. He had sympathised with all her frivolous
+pleasures, and made it easier for her to take life lightly.</p>
+
+<p>‘If I were once to be serious I should break my heart,’ she
+said to herself, as she sat curled up on the fluffy white rug by
+one of the morning-room windows, her thoughts straying off
+from ‘My Only Jo,’ which was the most frothy of fashionable
+novels.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill was so delighted with Torquay, in its increased
+towniness and shoppiness, its interesting Ritualistic services, at
+which it was agreeable to assist once in a way, however a well-regulated
+mind might disapprove all such Papistical innovations,
+that October had begun before she and her son returned to
+Hawksyard. Edgar had been glad to stay away. He shrank
+with a strange shyness from meeting Daphne; albeit he was
+always longing for her as the hart for water-brooks. He
+amused himself knocking about in his little yawl-rigged yacht,
+thinking of the girl he loved. Mrs. Turchill complained that
+he had grown selfish and inattentive. He rarely walked with
+her on the parade; he refused to listen to the town band; he
+went reluctantly to hear Miss Snevillici: and slumbered in his
+too-conspicuous front seat while that lady declaimed the Balcony
+Scene from ‘Romeo and Juliet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it were not for Deborah I should feel horribly lonely,’
+complained Mrs. Turchill. ‘And it is not right that I should
+be dependent upon a servant for society.’</p>
+
+<p>Gerald had not yet returned. He had gone on a yachting
+expedition with an old college chum. He was enjoying the
+wild free life, and his letters to Madoline were full of fun and
+high spirits.</p>
+
+<p>‘Next year we shall be here together, perhaps,’ he wrote.
+‘I think you would like the fun. It would be so new to you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</span>
+after the placid pleasures of South Hill. And what a yacht
+we would have! This I am now upon is a mere cockleshell
+to the ship I would build for my dear love. There should be
+room enough for you and all your pets—Fluff and the squirrel,
+your books, your piano, and for Daphne, too, if she would like
+to come; only she is such a wild young person that I should
+live in constant fear of her falling overboard.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline read this passage to Daphne laughingly. ‘You
+see that he remembers you, dear. The thought of you enters
+into his plans for the future.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is very kind: I am much obliged to him,’ Daphne
+answered icily.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the first time she had responded coldly to Madoline’s
+mention of her lover. Her sister felt the slight against
+her idol, and was deeply wounded.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ she said in a voice that was faintly tremulous
+in spite of her effort to be calm, ‘you have said many little
+things lately—or perhaps it is hardly what you have said, but
+only your looks and tones—which make me think that you
+dislike Gerald.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dislike him! No, that is impossible. He has all the
+attributes which make people admired and liked.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yet I don’t think you like him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is not in my nature to like many people. I like Edgar.
+I love you, with all my heart and soul. Be content with that,
+darling,’ said Daphne, kneeling by Madoline’s side, resting the
+bright head, with its soft silken hair, on her shoulder—the face
+looking downward and half hidden.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; I cannot be content. I made up my mind that Gerald
+was to be as dear to you as a brother—as dear as the brother
+you lost might have been, had God spared him and made him
+all we could wish. And now you set up some barrier of false
+pride against him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know about false pride. I can hardly be very
+fond of a man who ridicules me, and treats me like a child, or a
+plaything. Affection will scarcely thrive in an atmosphere of
+contempt.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Contempt! Why, Daphne, what can have put such an
+idea into your head? Gerald likes and admires you. If you
+knew how he praises your beauty, your fascinating ways!
+You would not have him praise you to your face, would you?
+My pet, I should be sorry to see you spoiled by adulation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you suppose I want praise or flattery?’ cried Daphne
+angrily. ‘I want to be respected. I want to be treated like
+a woman, not a child. I——Forgive me, Lina dearest. I
+daresay I am disagreeable and ill-tempered.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only believe the truth, dear. Gerald has no thought of
+you that is not tender and flattering. If he teases you a little<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</span>
+now and then it is only as a brother might tease you. He wishes
+you to think of him in every way as a brother. It always
+wounds me when you call him Mr. Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall never call him anything else,’ said Daphne sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>‘And if you do not marry as soon as I do——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall never marry——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, forgive me for not believing that. If you are not
+married next year you will have a second home at the Abbey.
+Gerald and I have chosen the rooms we intend for you; the
+dearest little boudoir over the porch, with an oriel window, just
+such a room as will delight you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are all that is good: but I don’t suppose I shall be
+able often to take advantage of your kindness. When you are
+married it will be my duty to dance attendance upon papa, and
+to try and make him like me. I don’t suppose I shall ever succeed
+but I mean to make the effort, however unpleasant it may
+be to both of us.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My sweet one, you are sure to win his love. Who could
+help loving you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My father has helped it all this time,’ answered Daphne,
+still moody and with downcast eyes.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Edgar and his mother stayed away till the third week in
+September. When they came back to Hawksyard cub-hunting
+was in full swing, and Mr. Turchill rose at five o’clock three
+mornings a week to ride to the kennels. He rode with two sets
+of hounds, making nothing of distance. He bought himself a
+fifth hunter—having four good ones already—which was naturally
+supposed to overtop all the rest in strength, pace, and
+beauty. His mother began to fear that the stables would be
+her son’s ruin.</p>
+
+<p>‘Three thousand a-year was considered a large income when
+your father and I were married,’ she said; ‘but it is a mere
+pittance now for a country gentleman in your position. We
+ought to be careful, Edgar.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who said we were going to be careless, mother mine? I
+am sure you are a model among housewives,’ said Edgar lightly.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve taken on a new man in the stable, I hear, Edgar—to
+attend to your new horse, I suppose.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only a new boy at fourteen bob a week, mother. We were
+rather short-handed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Short-handed! With four men!’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar could not stop to debate the matter. It was nine
+o’clock, and he was eating a hurried breakfast before starting
+on his useful covert hack for Snitterfield, where the hounds
+were to meet. It was to be the first meet of the season, an
+occasion for some excitement. Pleasant to see all the old
+company, with a new face or two perhaps among them, and a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</span>
+sprinkling of new horses—young ones whose education had only
+just begun. Edgar was going to exhibit his new mare, an
+almost thoroughbred black, and was all aglow with pride at
+the thought of the admiration she would receive. He looked
+his best in his well-worn red coat, new buckskins, and mahogany
+tops.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you’ll be careful, Edgar,’ said his mother, hanging
+about him in the hall, ‘and that you won’t go taking desperate
+jumps with that new mare. She has a nasty vicious look in her
+hind legs; and yesterday, when I opened the stable-door to
+speak to Baker, she put back her ears.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A horse may do that without being an absolute fiend,
+mother. Black Pearl is the kindest creature in Christendom.
+Good-bye.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dinner at eight, I suppose,’ sighed Mrs. Turchill, who preferred
+an earlier hour.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, if you don’t mind. It gives me plenty of time for a
+bath. Ta, ta.’</p>
+
+<p>He had swung himself on to the thick-set chestnut roadster,
+and was trotting merrily away on the other side of the drawbridge,
+before his mother had finished her regretful sigh. The
+groom had gone on before with Black Pearl. These hunting
+mornings were the only occasions on which Mr. Turchill forgot
+his disappointment. The keen delight of fresh air, a fast run,
+pleasant company, familiar voices, brushed away all dark
+thoughts. For the moment he lived only to fly across the level
+fields, in a country which seemed altogether changed from the
+scene of his daily walks and rides; all familiar things—hedges,
+bills, commons, brooks—taking a look of newness, as if he were
+galloping through a newly-invented world. For the moment he
+lived as the bird lives—a thing of life and motion, a creature
+too swift for thought or pain or care. Then, after the day’s
+hard riding, came the lazy homeward walk side by side with a
+friend, and friendly talk about horses and dogs and neighbours.
+Then a dinner for which even a lover’s appetite showed no sign
+of decay. Then pleasant exhaustion; a cigar; a nap; and a
+long night of dreamless rest.</p>
+
+<p>No doubt it was this relief afforded by the hunting season
+which saved Mr. Turchill from exhibiting himself in the dejected
+condition which Rosalind declared to be an essential mark of a
+lover. No lean cheek or sunken eye, neglected beard or sullen
+spirit, marked Edgar when he came to South Hill. He seemed
+so much at his ease, and had so much to tell about that first
+meet at Snitterfield, and the delightful run which followed it,
+that Daphne was confirmed in her idea that in affairs of the
+heart Mr. Turchill belonged to the weathercock species.</p>
+
+<p>‘If he could get over your rejection of him, you may suppose
+how easily he would get over mine,’ she said to her sister.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</span></p>
+
+<p>Yet she was very glad to have Edgar back again: to be able
+to order him about, to beat him at billiards, or waltz with him
+in the dusky hall between five-o’clock tea and the dressing-bell,
+while Lina played for them in the morning-room. In this one
+accomplishment Daphne was teacher, and a most imperious mistress.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you expect me to be seen dancing with you at the Hunt
+Ball, you must improve vastly between this and January,’ she
+said.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND IN MY HERTE WONDREN I BEGAN.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">For</span> a man to waltz in the gloaming with a girl whom he
+passionately loves, and who has contemptuously rejected him, is a
+kind of pleasure too near the edge of pain to be altogether blissful.
+Yet Edgar came every non-hunting day to South Hill,
+and was always ready to dance to Daphne’s piping. He was
+her first partner since the little crabbed old French master at
+Asnières, who had taken a few turns with her now and then,
+fiddling all the time, in order to show his other pupils what
+dancing meant. He declared that Daphne was the only one of
+them all who had the soul of a dancer.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Elle est née sylphide.</i> She moves in harmony with the
+music; she is a part of the melody,’ he said, as he scraped away
+at the languishing Duc de Reichstadt valse, the tune to which
+our grandmothers used to revolve in the days when the newly
+imported waltz was denounced as an iniquity.</p>
+
+<p>The grand Hunt Ball, which took place only once in two
+years at Stratford Town Hall, was to be held in the coming
+January, and Sir Vernon had consented that Daphne should
+appear at this festivity, chaperoned by her aunt and accompanied
+by her elder sister. It was an assembly so thoroughly
+local that Mrs. Ferrers felt it a solemn duty to be present:
+even her parochial character, which to the narrow-minded might
+seem incongruous, made it, she asserted, all the more incumbent
+upon her to be there.</p>
+
+<p>‘A clergyman’s wife ought to show her interest in all innocent
+amusements,’ she said. ‘If there were any fear of doubtful
+people getting admitted, of course I would sooner cut off my
+feet than cross the threshold; but where the voucher system is
+so thoroughly carried out——’</p>
+
+<p>‘There are sure to be plenty of pretty girls,’ said the Rector,
+‘and I believe there’s a capital card-room. I’ve a good mind to
+go with you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it were in summer, Duke, I should urge it on you as a duty;
+but in this severe weather the change from a hot room——’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Might bring on my bronchitis. I think you’re right, Rhoda.
+And the champagne at these places is generally a doubtful
+brand, while of all earthly delusions and snares a ball-supper is
+the most hollow. But I should like to have seen Daphne at her
+first ball. I am very fond of little Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am always pleased for you to be interested in my relations,’
+replied Mrs. Ferrers, with a sour look; ‘but I must say,
+of all the young people I ever had anything to do with, Daphne
+is the most unsatisfactory.’</p>
+
+<p>‘In what way?’ asked Mr. Ferrers, looking lazily up from
+his tea-cup.</p>
+
+<p>It was afternoon tea-time, and the husband and wife were
+sitting <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> before the fire in the Rector’s snug study,
+where the old black oak shelves were full of the most delightful
+books, which he was proud to possess but rarely looked at—inside.
+The outsides, beautiful in tawny and crimson leather,
+tooled and gilded and labelled and lettered, regaled his eye in
+many a lazy reverie, when he reposed in his armchair, and
+watched the firelight winking and blinking at those treasuries
+of wit and wisdom.</p>
+
+<p>‘In what way is Daphne troublesome, my dear?’ repeated
+the Rector. ‘I am interested in the puss. I taught her her Catechism.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish you had taught her the spirit as well as the letter,’
+retorted Mrs. Ferrers tartly. ‘The girl is an absolute pagan.
+After flirting with Edgar Turchill in a manner that would have
+endangered her reputation had she belonged to people of inferior
+position, she has the supreme folly to refuse him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What you call folly may be her idea of wisdom,’ answered
+the Rector. ‘She may do better than Turchill—a young man
+of excellent family, but with very humdrum surroundings, and
+a frightful dead-weight in that mother, who I believe has a
+life-interest in the estate which would prevent his striking out
+in any way till she is under the turf. Such a girl as Daphne
+should do better than Edgar Turchill. She is wise to wait for
+her chances.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How worldly you are, Marmaduke! It shocks me to hear
+such sentiments from a minister of the gospel.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear, he who was in every attribute a model for ministers
+of the gospel boasted that he was all things to all men.
+When I discuss worldly matters I talk as a man of the world.
+I think Daphne ought to make a brilliant marriage. She has
+the finest eyes I have seen for a long time—always excepting
+those which illuminate my own fireside,’ he added, smiling
+benignly on his wife.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, pray make no exception,’ she answered snappishly. ‘I
+never pretended to be a beauty; though my features are certainly
+more regular than Daphne’s. I am a genuine Lawford,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</span>
+and the Lawfords have had straight noses from time immemorial.
+Daphne takes after her unhappy mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, poor thing!’ sighed the Rector. ‘She was a lovely
+young creature when Lawford brought her home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne resembles her to a most unfortunate degree,’ said
+Aunt Rhoda.</p>
+
+<p>‘A sad story,’ sighed the Rector; ‘a sad story.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it would better become us to forget it,’ said his
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>‘My love it was you who spoke of poor Lady Lawford.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Marmaduke, I am disgusted at the tone you take about her.
+Poor Lady Lawford indeed! I consider her quite the most
+execrable woman I ever heard of.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She was beautiful; men told her so, and she believed them.
+She was tempted; and she was weak. Execrable is a hard word,
+Rhoda. She never injured you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She blighted my brother’s life. Do you suppose I can
+easily forgive that? You men are always ready to make excuses
+for a pretty woman. I heard of Colonel Kirkbank, the
+other day. Lady Hetheridge met him at Baden—a wreck. They
+say he is immensely rich. He has never married, it seems.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That at least is a grace in him. “His honour rooted in dishonour
+stood; and faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are in a sentimental mood this evening, Marmaduke,’
+sneered Rhoda. ‘One would suppose that you had been in love
+with my brother’s second wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She has been so long in her grave that I don’t think you
+and I need quarrel if I confess that I admired her. There is a
+look in Daphne’s face now she has grown up that recalls her
+mother almost painfully. I hope Todd won’t burn that pheasant,
+Rhoda. I’m afraid she is getting a little careless. The
+last was as dry as a stick.’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Scotland made up for a chilly and inferior summer by an
+altogether superior autumn. The days were ever so much
+fairer and longer on that wild north coast than they were in
+Warwickshire; and tempted by the beauty of sky and sea,
+backed by the urgent desire of his bachelor friend, the skipper
+of the smart schooner-rigged yacht <em>Kelpie</em>, Gerald Goring stayed
+much longer than he had intended to stay; atoning, so far as
+he could atone, for his prolonged absence, by writing his betrothed
+the most delightful letters, and sending a weekly packet
+of sepia sketches, which reflected every phase of sea and sky,
+rock and hill. To describe these things with his brush was as
+easy to Gerald as it is to other men to describe with their pens.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is an idle dreamy life,’ he wrote. ‘When I am not
+shooting land-fowl on the hills, or water-fowl from my dingey,
+I sit on the deck and sketch, till I grow almost into a seavegetable—a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</span>
+zoophyte which contracts and expands with a
+faintly pleasurable sensation—and calls that life. I read no end
+of poetry—Byron, Shelley, Keats—and that book whose wisdom
+and whose beauty no amount of reading can ever dry up—Goethe’s
+“Faust.” I want no new books—the old ones are inexhaustible.
+Curiosity may tempt me to look at a new writer;
+but in an age of literary mediocrity I go back for choice to
+the Titans of the past. Do you think I am scornful of your
+favourites, Tennyson and Browning? No, love. They, too,
+are Titans; but we shall value them more when they have
+received the divine honours that can only come after death.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am longing to be with you, and yet I feel that I am
+doing myself a world of good in this rough open-air life. I was
+getting a little moped at the Abbey. The place is so big, and
+so dreary, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty—waiting to
+wake into life and brightness at the coming of love and you.
+The lonely rooms are haunted by my dear mother’s image, and
+by the sense of my loss. When you come I shall be so happy
+in the present that the pain of past sorrow will be softened.</p>
+
+<p>‘I sit sketching these romantic caves—where we earn our
+dinner by shooting the innocent rock-pigeons—and thinking of
+you, and of my delight in showing you this coast next autumn.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, love, we will have a yacht. I know you are fond of
+the sea. Your sister is a fanatic in her love of the water. How
+she will delight in these islands!’</p>
+
+<p>He thought of Daphne sometimes, as he sat in the bow of
+the boat, lulled almost to slumber by the rise and fall of the
+waves gently lapping the hull. His brush fell idle across the
+little tin colour-box, and he gave himself up to listless reverie.
+How Daphne would love this free unfettered life: a life in
+which there were no formalities; no sitting prim and straight
+at an orderly dinner-table; no conventional sequence of everyday
+ceremonies in a hideous monotony. It was a roving gipsy
+life which must needs please that erratic soul.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor little Daphne! It is strange that she and I don’t
+get on better,’ he said to himself. ‘We were such capital
+friends at Fontainebleau. Perhaps the recollection of that day
+is in some way disagreeable to her. She has been very stand-offish
+to me ever since—except by fits and starts. There are
+times when she forgets to be formal; and then she is charming.’</p>
+
+<p>Yes; there had been times—times when all that was picturesque
+and poetical in her nature asserted itself, and when
+her future brother-in-law succumbed to the spell, and admired
+her just a little more warmly than he felt to be altogether well
+for his peace, or perchance for hers.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps he, too, had been somewhat formal—had fenced
+himself round with forms and ceremonies—lest some lurking
+sentiment which he had never dared to analyse, or even to think<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</span>
+about, should grow stronger. He wanted to be honest; he
+wanted to be true and loyal. But the lovely young face, so
+piquant, so entrancing in its exquisite girlishness, came across
+his fancies too often for perfect repose of conscience. The
+memory of those two summer days at Fontainebleau—idle,
+foolish, unconsidered hours—was an ever-present part of his
+mind. It was so small a thing; yet it haunted him. How
+much better it would have been, he thought, if Daphne had
+been more candid, had allowed him to speak freely of that
+innocent adventure! Concealment gave it a flavour of guilt.
+A hundred times he had been on the point of letting out the
+secret by this or that allusion, when Daphne’s blush and the
+quiver of Daphne’s lip had startled him into caution. This
+made a secret understanding between them in spite of his own
+desire to be honest; and it worried him to think that there
+should be any such hidden bond.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline was the love of his life, the hope and glory of his
+days. He had no doubt as to his feelings about her. From his
+boyhood he had admired, revered, and loved her. He was only
+three years her senior, and in their early youth the delicately-nurtured,
+carefully-educated girl, reared among grown-up
+people, and far in advance of her years, had seemed in all
+intellectual things the boy’s superior. Lady Geraldine was idle
+and self-indulgent; she petted and spoiled her son, but she
+taught him nothing. Had he not a private tutor—a young
+clergyman who preferred the luxurious leisure of the Abbey
+to the hard work of a curacy—and was not his education
+sufficiently provided for when this well-recommended young
+Oxonian had been engaged at a munificent salary? The young
+Oxonian was as fond of shooting, billiards, cricket, and boating
+as his pupil; so the greater part of Gerald’s early youth was
+devoted to these accomplishments; and it was only the boy’s
+natural aptitude for learning whatever he wished to learn which
+saved him from being a dunce. At fifteen he was transferred
+to Eton, where he found better cricketing and a better river
+than in Warwickshire.</p>
+
+<p>From Lady Geraldine the boy had received no bent towards
+high thoughts or a noble ambition. She loved him passionately,
+but with a love that was both weak and selfish. She would
+have had him educated at home, a boudoir sybarite, to lie on
+the Persian rug at her feet and read frivolous books in fine
+bindings; to sit by her side when she drove; to be pampered
+and idolised and ruined in body and soul. The father’s strong
+sense interfered to prevent this. Mr. Giles-Goring was no
+classic, and he was a self-taught mathematician, while the boy’s
+tutor had taken honours in both branches of learning; but he
+was clever enough to see that this luxurious home-education
+was a mockery, that the lad was being flattered by an obsequious<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</span>
+tutor, and spoiled by a foolish mother. He sent the Oxonian
+about his business, and took the boy to Eton, not before Lady
+Geraldine had done him as much harm as a doting mother can
+do to a beloved son. She had taught him, unintentionally and
+unconsciously, perhaps, to despise his father. She had taught
+him to consider himself, by right of his likeness to her and his
+keen sympathy with all her thoughts and fancies and prejudices—a
+sympathy to which she had, as unconsciously, trained and
+schooled him—belonging to her class and not to his father’s.
+The low-born father was an accident in his life—a good endurable
+man, and to be respected (after a fashion) for his lowly
+worth, but spiritually, eclectically, æsthetically, of no kin with
+the son who bore his name, and who was to inherit, and perhaps
+waste, his hard-won wealth.</p>
+
+<p>The mother and son had a code of signals, little looks and
+subtle smiles, with which they communicated their ideas before
+the blunt plain-spoken father. Lady Geraldine never spoke
+against her husband: nor did she descend even in moments of
+confidence to vulgar ridicule. ‘So like your father,’ she would
+say, with her languid smile, of any honest unconventional act
+or speech of Mr. Giles-Goring’s; and it must be confessed that
+Mr. Giles-Goring was one of those impulsive outspoken men
+who do somewhat exercise a wife’s patience. Lady Geraldine
+never lost her temper with him; she was never rude; she never
+overtly thwarted his wishes, or opposed his plans; but she
+shrugged her graceful shoulders, and lifted her delicately-pencilled
+eyebrows, and allowed her son to understand what
+an impassable gulf yawned between her, the daughter of a
+hundred earls—or at least half-a-dozen—and the self-made
+millionaire.</p>
+
+<p>Escaping from the stifling moral atmosphere of his mother’s
+boudoir, Gerald found his first ideas of a higher and a nobler
+life at South Hill. At the Abbey he had been taught to believe
+that there were two good things in the world, rank and money;
+but that even rank, the very flower of life, must droop and fade
+if not manured with gold. At South Hill he learned to think
+lightly of both, and to aspire to something better than either.
+For the sake of being praised and admired by Madoline he
+worked, almost honestly, at Eton and Oxford. She kindled
+his ambition, and, inspired by her, his youth and talent blossomed
+into poetry. He sat up late at nights writing impassioned
+verse. He dashed off wild stanzas in the ‘To Thyrza’ style,
+when his brain was fired by the mild orgies of a modern wine,
+and the fiercer rapture of a modern bear-fight. And Madoline
+was his only Thyrza. He was not a man who can find his Egeria
+in every street. For a little while he fancied that it was in him
+to be a second Byron; that the divine breath inflated his lungs;
+that he had but to strike on the cithara for the divine accords<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</span>
+to come. He strummed cleverly enough upon the sacred strings,
+spoiled a good deal of clean paper, and amused himself considerably.
+Then, failing—in consequence of an utter absence of the
+critical faculty—to win the prize for English verse, he turned
+his back upon the Muses, and henceforward spoke with ridicule
+of his poetic adolescence. Still the Muse had exercised her
+elevating influence; and, inspired by her and by Madoline,
+Gerald Goring had learned to despise those lesser aims which his
+mother had held before him as the sublimities of life.</p>
+
+<p>He was fond of art, and had a marked talent for painting;
+but as he never extended his labours or his studies beyond the
+amateur’s easy course, he was not likely to rise above the amateur’s
+level. Why should a man who is sure to inherit a million
+submit to the drudgery of severe technical training in order to
+take the bread out of the mouths of painters who must needs
+live by their art? Gerald painted a little, now landscape, now
+figure, as the spirit moved him; sculptured a little; poetised a
+little; set a little song of his own to music now and then to
+please Lina; and was altogether accomplished and interesting.
+But he would have liked to be great, to have had his name
+bandied about for praise or blame upon the lips of men; and it
+irked him somewhat to know and feel that he was not of the
+stuff which makes great men; or, in other words, that he entirely
+lacked that power of sustained industry which can alone achieve
+greatness. For his own inward satisfaction, and for Lina’s sake,
+he would have liked to distinguish himself. But the pathway of
+life had been made fatally smooth for him; it lay through a
+land of flowery pastures and running brooks, a happy valley of
+all earthly delights; and how could any man be resolute enough
+to turn aside from all sensuous pleasures to climb rugged rocky
+hills in pursuit of some perchance unattainable spiritual delight?
+There was so much that wealth could give him, that it would
+have been hardly natural for Gerald Goring to live laborious
+days for the sake of the one thing which wealth could not give.
+He had just that dreamy poetic temperament which can clothe
+sensual joys with the glory and radiance of the intellectual.
+Politics, statecraft, he frankly detested; science he considered
+an insult to poetry. He would have liked the stir and excitement,
+the fever and glory of war; but not the daily dry-as-dust
+work of a soldier’s life, or the hardships of campaigning. He
+was not an unbeliever, but his religious belief was too vague
+for a Churchman. Having failed to distinguish himself as a
+poet, and being too idle to succeed as a painter, he saw no royal
+road to fame open to him; and so was content to fall back
+from the race, and enjoy the delicious repose of an utterly aimless
+life. He pictured to himself a future in which there should
+be no crumpled rose-leaf; a wife in all things perfect, fondly
+loved, admired, respected; children as lovely as a poet’s dream<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</span>
+of childhood; an existence passed amidst the fairest scenes of
+earth, with such endless variety of background as unlimited
+wealth can give. He would not, like Tiberius, build himself a
+dozen villas upon one rock-bound island; but he would make
+his temporary nest in every valley and by every lake, striking
+his tents before ever satiety could dull the keen edge of enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>Nor should this ideal life, though aimless, be empty of good
+works. Madoline should have <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">carte blanche</i> for the gratification
+of her benevolent schemes, great or small, and he would be ready
+to help her with counsel and sympathy; provided always that
+he were not called upon to work, or to put himself <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en rapport</i>
+with professional philanthropists—a most useful class, no doubt,
+but obnoxious to him as a lover of ease and pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>He had looked forward with placid self-satisfaction to this
+life ever since his engagement—and indeed for some time before
+that solemn betrothal. From his boyhood he had loved Madoline,
+and had believed himself beloved by her. Betrothal
+followed almost as a matter of course. Lady Geraldine had
+spoken of the engagement as a settled thing, ever so long before
+the lovers had bound themselves each to each. She had told
+Lina that she was to be her daughter, the only girl she could
+love as her son’s wife; and when Gerald was away at Oxford,
+Lina had spent half her life at Goring with his mother, talking
+about him, worshipping him, as men are worshipped sometimes
+by women infinitely above them.</p>
+
+<p>From the time of his engagement—nay, from the time when
+first his boyish heart recognised a mistress—Gerald’s affection
+for Madoline had known no change or diminution. Never had
+his soul wavered. Nor did it waver in his regard and reverence
+for her now, as he sat on the sunlit deck of the <em>Kelpie</em> in this
+fair autumn weather, his brush lying idle by his side, his
+thoughts perplexed and wandering. Yet there was a jar in the
+harmony of his life; a dissonant interval somewhere in the
+music. The thought of Daphne troubled him. He had a suspicion
+that she was not happy. Gay and sparkling as she was
+at times, she was prone to fits of silence and sullenness unaccountable
+in so young a creature: unless it were that she
+cherished some secret grief, and that the hidden fox so many of
+us carry had his tooth in her young breast.</p>
+
+<p>He was no coxcomb, not in the least degree inclined to suppose
+that women had a natural bent towards falling in love
+with him: yet in this case he was troubled by the suspicion that
+Daphne’s stand-offishness was not so much a token of indifference
+or dislike, as the sign of a deeper feeling. She had been
+so variable in her manner to him. Now all sweet, and anon all
+sour; now avoiding him, now showing but too plainly her intense
+delight in his presence—by subtlest signs; by sudden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</span>
+blushes; by loveliest looks; by faintly quivering lip of
+trembling hand; by the swift lighting up of her whole face at
+his coming; by the low veiled tones of her soft sweet voice.
+Yes; by too many a sign and token—fighting her hardest to hide
+her secret all the time—she had given him ground for suspecting
+that she loved him.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled, with unspeakable pain, her pale distressed face
+that day of their first meeting at South Hill; the absolute
+horror in her widely-opened eyes; the deadly coldness of her
+trembling hand. Why had she called her boat by that ridiculous
+name: and why had she been so anxious to cancel it?
+The thought of those things disturbed his peace. She was so
+lovely, so innocent, so wild, so wilful.</p>
+
+<p>‘My bright spirit of the woods,’ he said to himself, ‘I should
+like your fate to be happy. And yet—and yet—’</p>
+
+<p>He dared not shape his thought further, but the question
+was in his mind: ‘Would I like her fate to be far apart from
+mine?’</p>
+
+<p>Why had she rejected Edgar Turchill, a man so honestly, so
+obviously devoted to her?—able, one might suppose, to sympathise
+with all her girlish fancies, to gratify every whim.</p>
+
+<p>‘She ought to like him; she must be made to like him,’ he
+said to himself, his heart suddenly aglow with virtuous, almost
+heroical resolve.</p>
+
+<p>His heart had thrilled that night in the shadow of the
+walnut boughs when he heard Daphne’s contemptuous rejection
+of her lover. He had been guiltily glad. And yet he
+was ready to do his duty: he was eager to play the mediator,
+and win the girl for that true-hearted lover. He meant to be
+loyal.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor Daphne!’ he sighed. ‘Her cradle was shadowed by a
+guilty mother’s folly. She had been cheated out of her father’s
+love. She need have something good in this life to make
+amends for all she has lost. Edgar would make an admirable
+husband.’</p>
+
+<p>The <em>Kelpie</em> turned her nose towards home next day; and
+soon Gerald was dreamily watching the play of sunbeam and
+shadow on the heathery slopes above the Kyles of Bute, very
+near Greenock, and the station and the express train that was
+to carry him home. He turned his back almost reluctantly on
+the sea life, the unfettered bachelor habits. Though he longed
+to see Madoline again, almost as fondly as he had longed for her
+four months ago when he was leaving Bergen, yet there was
+a curious indefinable pain mingled with the lover’s yearning.
+An image thrust itself between him and his own true love;
+a haunting shape was mingled with all his dreams of the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pray God she may marry soon, and have children, and get<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</span>
+matronly and dull and stupid!’ he said to himself savagely; ‘and
+then I shall forget the dryad of Fontainebleau.’</p>
+
+<p>He travelled all night and got to Stratford early in the
+afternoon. He had given no notice of his coming, either at the
+Abbey or South Hill, and his first visit was naturally to the
+house that held his betrothed. His limbs were cramped and
+stiffened by the long journey, and he despatched his valet and
+his portmanteau to Goring in a fly, and walked across the fields
+to South Hill. It was a long walk and he took his time about it,
+stopping now and then to look somewhat wistfully at the brown
+river, on whose breast the scattered leaves were drifting. The
+sky was dull and gray, with only faint patches of wintry sunlight
+in the west; the atmosphere was heavy; and the year seemed
+ever so much older here than in Scotland.</p>
+
+<p>He passed Baddesley and Arden, with only a glance across
+the smooth lawn at the Rectory, where the china-asters were in
+their glory, and the majolica vases under the rustic verandah
+made bright spots of colour in the autumn gloom. Then, instead
+of taking the meadow-path to South Hill, he chose the
+longer way, and followed the windings of the Avon, intending
+to let himself into the South Hill grounds by the little gate
+near Daphne’s boat-house.</p>
+
+<p>He was within about a quarter of a mile of the boat-house
+when he saw a spot of scarlet gleaming amidst the shadows of
+the rustic roof. The boat-house was a thatched erection of
+the Noah’s Ark pattern, and the front was open to the water.
+Below this thatched gable-end, and on a level with the river,
+showed the vivid spot of red. Gerald quickened his pace unconsciously,
+with a curious eagerness to solve the mystery of
+that bit of colour.</p>
+
+<p>Yes; it was as he had fancied. It was Daphne, seated alone
+and dejected on the keel of her upturned boat. The yellow
+collie darted out and leapt up at him, growling and snapping,
+as he drew near her. Daphne looked at him—or he so fancied—with
+a piteous half-beseeching gaze. She was very pale, and
+he thought she looked wretchedly ill.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you been ill?’ he asked eagerly, as they shook hands.
+‘Quiet, you mongrel!’ to the suspicious Goldie.</p>
+
+<p>‘Never was better in my life,’ she answered briskly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then your looks belie you. I was afraid you had been
+seriously ill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you think if I had Lina would have mentioned it to
+you in a postscript, or a <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">nota bene</i>, or something?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I detest cold weather, and I am chilled to the bone, in spite
+of this thick shawl,’ she answered lightly, glancing at the scarlet
+wrap which had caught Gerald’s eye from afar.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder you choose such a spot as this for your afternoon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</span>
+meditations. It is certainly about the dampest and chilliest
+place you could find.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I did not come here to meditate, but to read,’ answered
+Daphne. ‘I have got Browning’s new poem, and it requires a
+great deal of hard thinking before one can quite appreciate it;
+and if I tell you that Aunt Rhoda is in the drawing-room, and
+means to stick there till dinner-time, you will not require any
+further reason for my being here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s dreadful. Yet I must face the gorgon. I am dying
+to see Lina.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Naturally; and she will be enraptured at your return,’
+answered Daphne in her most natural manner. ‘She has been
+expecting you every day i’ the hour.’</p>
+
+<p>‘“For in a minute there are many days”—Shakespeare.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank God! I don’t object to the bard of Avon half so
+strongly now. I have been in a country where everybody
+quotes an uncouth rhymester whom they call Bobbie Bairrns.
+Shakespeare seems almost civilised in comparison. Will you
+walk up to the house with me?’</p>
+
+<p>She looked down at her open book. She had not been reading
+when he came unawares upon her solitude. He had seen
+that; just as surely as he had seen the faint convulsive movement
+of her throat, the start, the pallor that marked her surprise
+at his approach. He had acquired a fatal habit of watching and
+analysing her emotions; and it seemed to him that she had
+brightened since his coming, that new light and colour had
+returned to her face; almost as you may see the revival of a
+flower that has drooped in the drought, and which revivifies
+under the gentle summer rain.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at her book doubtfully, as if she would like to
+say no.</p>
+
+<p>‘You had better come with me. It is nearly tea-time, and
+I know you are dying for a cup of tea. I never knew a woman
+that wasn’t.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Exhausted nature tells me that it is tea-time. Yes; I suppose
+I had better come.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘LOVE WOL NOT BE CONSTREINED BY MAISTRIE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A man</span> who lives within easy reach of two good packs of fox-hounds,
+and in a fair hunting country on the very edge of the
+shires, can hardly mope, albeit he may feel that, in a general
+way, his heart is broken. Thus it was with Edgar Turchill, who
+hunted four days a week, and came to South Hill on the off-days<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</span>
+to suffer and enjoy all those hot fits and cold fits, those desperate
+delights plucked from the jaws of pain, which a man feels
+when he adores a girl who does not care a straw for him. He had
+been rejected, even with contumely, as it seemed to him: yet so
+dearly did he delight in Daphne’s society that if he were destined
+never to win her for his own, the next best blessing he asked from
+Fate was to be allowed to dangle about her for ever—to fetch
+and carry, to be snubbed, and laughed at, and patronised, as it
+pleased her wilful humour.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn and early winter were mild—a capital season for
+hunting.</p>
+
+<p>‘What selfish creatures you sporting men are!’ cried Daphne
+one morning, looking gloomily out at the gloomy November day;
+‘so long as you can go galloping over the muggy fields after innocent
+foxes you don’t care how dreary the world is for other people.
+We want a hard frost, for then we might have some skating on
+the pond. I wish the Avon would freeze, so that we could skate
+to Tewkesbury.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay we shall have plenty of hard weather in January,’
+said Edgar apologetically. It was one of his off-days, and he
+had ridden over to South Hill directly after luncheon. ‘You
+ought to hunt, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course I ought; but Sir Vernon does not see it in the
+same light. When I mildly suggested that I thought you
+wouldn’t mind lending me a horse—’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mind!’ cried Edgar. ‘That little mare of mine would carry
+you to perfection; and she’s so clever you’d have nothing to do
+but to sit upon her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Exactly. It would be a foretaste of paradise. But at my
+hinting such a possibility my father gave me a look that almost
+annihilated me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You may be more independently situated next season,’ suggested
+Mr. Goring, looking up from the billiard-table, where he
+was amusing himself with a few random strokes while Madoline
+was putting on her hat and jacket for a rustic ramble. ‘You
+may have your own stable, perhaps, and a nice sporting husband
+to look after it for you.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne reddened angrily at the suggestion; while poor Edgar
+put on his sheepish look, and took refuge at the billiard-table.</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you coming out for a walk, Empress?’ asked Gerald
+carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know. It’s such dreary work prowling about a
+wintry landscape. I think I shall stay at home and read.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You’d better come,’ pleaded Edgar, feeling that he would
+not be allowed the perilous bliss of a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> afternoon with
+her, and that, if such bliss were permissible, the pleasure would
+be mixed with too deep a pain. Out in the fields and lanes,
+with Goring and Madoline, he might enjoy her society.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</span></p>
+
+<p>She half consented to go, and then, discovering that Madoline
+was going to make some calls, changed her mind.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll go to my room and finish my third volume,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a misanthrope you are, Daphne—a female Timon! I
+think I shall call you Timonia henceforward,’ retorted Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘When it is a question of making ceremonious afternoon
+visits, I rather hate my fellow-creatures,’ replied Daphne, with
+charming frankness. ‘The nicest people one knows are not half
+so nice as the figments of fancy one meets in a book; and if the
+book-person waxes stupid, we can shut him up—which one can’t
+do to a living friend.’</p>
+
+<p>So Daphne wished Mr. Turchill good-day, and went off to
+her own den—the pretty chintz-draperied bedroom, with its frivolities
+and individualities in the way of furniture and ornament,
+and its privileged solitude.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, feeling that he might be a nuisance to the other two
+if he offered to accompany them, prepared to take his leave, yet
+with a lingering hope that Madoline would ask him to remain.</p>
+
+<p>Her kindness divined his wish, and she asked him to stay to
+dinner.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’re very kind,’ he faltered, having dined at South Hill
+once in the current week, and sorely afraid that he was degenerating
+into a sponge, ‘but I’ve got a fellow to see at Warwick;
+I shall have to dine with him. But if you’ll let me come back
+in the evening for a game at billiards?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let you? Why, Edgar, you know my father is always glad
+to see you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is very good—only—I’m afraid of becoming a nuisance.
+I can’t help hanging about the place.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We are always pleased to have you here—all of us.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar thanked her warmly. He had fallen into a dejected
+condition; fancying himself of less account than the rest of men
+since Daphne had spurned him; a creature to be scorned and
+trampled under foot. Nor did Daphne’s easy kindness give him
+any comfort. She had resumed her tone of sisterly friendship.
+She seemed to forget that he had ever proposed to her. She was
+serenely unconscious that he was breaking his heart for her.
+Why could he not get himself killed, or desperately hurt in the
+hunting-field, so that she might be sorry for him? He was
+almost angry with his horses for being such clever jumpers, and
+never putting his neck in peril. A purl across a bullfinch, a
+broken collar-bone, might melt that obdurate heart. And a man
+may get through life very well with a damaged collar-bone.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid the collar-bone wouldn’t be enough,’ mused
+Edgar. ‘It doesn’t sound romantic. A broken arm, worn in a
+sling, might be of some use.’</p>
+
+<p>He would have suffered anything, hazarded anything, to improve
+his chances. He tried to lure Daphne to Hawksyard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</span>
+again; tempting her with the stables, the dogs, the poultry-yard; but
+it was no use. She had always some excuse for
+declining his or his mother’s invitations. She would not even
+accompany Lina when she went to call upon Mrs. Turchill. She
+had an idea that Edgar was in the habit of offering his hand
+and heart to every young lady visitor.</p>
+
+<p>‘He made such an utter idiot of himself the night we dined
+there,’ she said to Lina. ‘I shall never again trust myself upon
+his patrimonial estate. On neutral ground I haven’t the least
+objection to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, is it kind to speak of him like that, when you
+know that he was thoroughly in earnest?’</p>
+
+<p>‘He was thoroughly in earnest about you before. True love
+cannot change like that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yet I am convinced that he is true, Daphne,’ Lina answered
+seriously.</p>
+
+<p>Autumn slipped into winter. There was a light frost every
+night, and in the misty mornings the low meadows glittered
+whitely with a thin coating of rime, which vanished with those
+early mists. There was no weather cold enough to curdle the
+water in the shallow pond yonder by the plantation, or to stop
+Lord Willoughby’s hounds. Daphne sighed in vain for the
+delight of skating.</p>
+
+<p>Christmas at South Hill was not a period of exuberant mirth.
+Ever since his second wife’s death Sir Vernon Lawford had held
+himself as much aloof from county society as he conveniently
+could, without being considered either inhospitable or eccentric.
+There was a good deal done for the poor, in a very quiet way,
+by Madoline, and the servants were allowed to enjoy themselves;
+but of old-fashioned festivity there was none. Mr. and Mrs.
+Ferrers were asked to dine on Christmas Day. Aunt Rhoda
+suggested that they should be asked, and accepted the invitation
+in advance; in order, as she observed, that the bond of family
+union might be strengthened by genial intercourse upon that
+sacred anniversary. Gerald was of course to be at South Hill,
+where at all times he spent more of his waking hours than at
+Goring Abbey. Edgar had spoken so dolefully of the dulness of
+a Christmas Day at Hawksyard that Madoline had been moved
+by pity to suggest that Mrs. Turchill and her son might be
+invited to the family feast.</p>
+
+<p>‘That will make it a party,’ said Sir Vernon, when his daughter
+pleaded for this grace, ‘and I am not well enough to stand a
+party.’</p>
+
+<p>He was not well. Of that fact there could be no doubt.
+He had been given to hypochondriacal fancies for the last five
+years, but there was a certain amount of fact underlying these
+fancies. The effeminately white hand was growing more transparent;
+the capricious appetite was more difficult to tempt; the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</span>
+slow promenade on the garden terrace was growing slower; the
+thin face was more drawn; the aquiline nose was sharper in
+outline. There was a chronic complaint of some obscure kind,
+vaguely described by a London specialist, and dimly understood
+by the family doctor, which must eventually shorten the baronet’s
+life; but his mind was so vigorous and unbending, his countenance
+so stern, his manner so uncompromising, that it was difficult
+to believe that Death had set his mark upon him. To his
+elder daughter alone he revealed the one tender feeling left in
+him—and that was his very real affection for herself; a love
+that was chastened and poetised by his reverent and regretful
+memory of her mother.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear father, it need not be a party because of the Turchills.
+Edgar is like one of ourselves, and Mrs. Turchill is so very
+quiet.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ask them, Lina, ask them, if it will be any pleasure to you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it will please Edgar. He says Hawksyard is so
+dreary at Christmas.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If people had not set up a fictitious idea of Christmas gaiety,
+they would not complain of the season being dull,’ said Sir
+Vernon somewhat impatiently. ‘That notion of unlimited
+junketing doesn’t come from any real religious feeling. Peace
+on earth and goodwill towards men doesn’t mean snapdragon
+and childish foolery. It is a silly myth of the Middle Ages,
+which sticks like a burr to the modern mind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a pleasant idea that kindred and old friends should
+meet at that sacred time,’ argued Lina gently.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, if kindred in a general way could meet without quarrelling.
+That there should be a good deal done for the poor at
+Christmas I can understand and approve. It is the central
+point of winter; and then there is the Divine association which
+beautifies every gift. And that children should look forward
+to Christmas as an extra birthday in every nursery is a pretty
+fancy enough. But that men and women of the world should
+foregather and pretend to be fonder of one another on that day
+than at any other season is too hollow a sham for my patience.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline wrote a friendly invitation to Mrs. Turchill, and
+gave her note to Edgar to carry home that evening.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s awfully good of you,’ he said ruefully, when she told
+him the purport of her letter, ‘but I’m afraid it won’t answer.
+Mother stands on her dignity about Christmas Day; and I
+don’t think wild horses would drag her away from her own
+dining-room. I shall have to dine <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i> with her, poor old
+dear; and we shall sit staring at the oak panelling, and
+pretending to enjoy the plum-pudding made according to the
+old lady’s own particular recipe handed down by her grandmother.
+There has been an agreeable sameness about our
+Christmas dinner for the last ten years. It is as solemn as a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</span>
+Druidical sacrifice. I could almost fancy that mother had been
+out in the woods at daybreak cutting mistletoe with a golden
+sickle.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was correct in his idea of his mother’s reply. Mrs.
+Turchill wrote with much ceremony and politeness that, delighted
+as she and her son would have been to accept so gratifying
+an invitation, she must on principle reluctantly decline it.
+She never had dined away from her own house on Christmas
+Day, and she never would. She considered it a day upon which
+families should gather round their own firesides, etc., etc., etc.,
+and remained, with affectionate regards, etc.</p>
+
+<p>‘How can a family of two gather round the fireside?’
+asked Edgar dolefully. ‘The dear old mother writes rank nonsense.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be down-hearted, Turchill,’ said Gerald. ‘Perhaps
+by Christmas twelvemonth you may be a family of three; and
+the year after that a family of four; and the year after that,
+five. Who knows? Time brings all good things.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am just as grateful to you, Madoline, as if mother had
+accepted,’ said Edgar, ignoring his friend’s speech, though he
+blushed at its meaning. ‘It will be ineffably dreary. If the
+old lady should go to bed extra early—she sometimes does on
+Christmas Day—I might ride over, just—just——’</p>
+
+<p>‘In time for a rattling good game of billiards,’ interjected
+Gerald. ‘Lina and I are improving. You and Daphne needn’t
+give us more than twenty-five in fifty.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll have a horse ready saddled. Mother likes me to read
+some of the verses in the “Christian Year” to her after tea.
+I’m afraid I’m not a good reader, for Keble and I always send
+her to sleep.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Be particularly monotonous on this occasion,’ said Daphne,
+‘and come over in time for a match.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You wouldn’t be shocked if I came in as late as ten
+o’clock?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I mean to sit up till two,’ protested Daphne. ‘It is my
+first Christmas at home, since I was in the nursery. It must
+be a Shakespearian Christmas. We’ll have a wassail bowl:
+roasted apples bobbing about in warm negus, or something of
+that kind. I shall copy out some mediæval recipes for Spicer.
+Come as late as you like, Edgar. Papa is sure to go to bed
+early. Christmas will have a soporific effect upon him, as well
+as upon Mrs. Turchill, no doubt; and the Ferrers people will go
+when he retires; and we can have no end of fun in the billiard-room,
+where not a mortal can hear us.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You seem to be providing for a night of riot—a regular
+orgy—something almost as dissipated as Nero’s banquet on the
+lake of Agrippa,’ said Gerald, laughing at her earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should not one be merry for once in one’s life?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Why indeed?’ cried Gerald, ‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Vogue la galère</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Forget me not, en <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vogant la galère</i>.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent">There’s a line from an early English poet for you, my Shakespearian
+student.’</p>
+
+<p>Christmas Day was not joyless. Daphne, so fitful in her
+mirth, so sudden in her intervals of gloom—periods of depression
+which Sir Vernon, Aunt Rhoda, and Madoline’s confidential
+maid and umquhile nurse Mowser, stigmatised as sulks—was on
+this occasion all sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have made up my mind to be happy,’ she said at breakfast;
+which meal she and Madoline were enjoying alone in
+the bright cheery room, the table gay with winter flowers and
+old silver, a wood fire burning merrily in the bright brass grate.
+‘Even my father’s coldness shall not freeze me. Last Christmas
+Day I was eating my heart at Asnières, and envying that
+vulgar Dibb, whose people had had her sent home, and hoping
+savagely that she would be ever so sick in crossing the Channel.
+There I was in that dreary tawdry school-room, with half-a-dozen
+mahogany-coloured girls from Toulon, and Toulouse,
+and Carcassonne; and now I am at home and with you, and I
+mean to be happy. Discontent shall not come near me to-day.
+And you will taste my wassail bowl, won’t you, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, dear, if it isn’t quite too nasty.’</p>
+
+<p>Lina had given her younger sister license for any kind of
+mediæval experiments, in conjunction with Mrs. Spicer; and
+there had been much consultation of authorities—Knight, and
+Timbs, and Washington Irving—and a good deal of messing
+in the spacious still-room, with a profligate consumption of
+lemons and sherry, and spices and russet apples. With the
+dinner at which her father and the Rectory people were to
+assist, Daphne ventured no interference; but she had planned
+a Shakespearian refection in the billiard-room at midnight—if
+they could only get rid of Aunt Rhoda, whose sense of propriety
+was so strong that she might perhaps insist upon staying till the
+two young men had taken their departure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish we could have old Spicer in to matronise the party,’
+said Daphne. ‘She looks lovely in her Sunday evening gown.
+She would sit smiling benevolently at us till she dropped
+asleep; instead of contemplating us as if she thought the next
+stage of our existence would be a lunatic asylum, as Aunt
+Rhoda generally does when we are cheerful.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid you must put up with Aunt Rhoda to-night,
+Daphne,’ answered Madoline. ‘She has suggested that she and
+the Rector should have the Blue Room, as the drive home
+might bring on his bronchitis.’</p>
+
+<p>‘His bronchitis, indeed!’ cried Daphne. ‘He appropriates
+the complaint as if nobody else had ever had it. So they are
+going to stay the night! Of all the cool proceedings I ever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</span>
+heard of that is about the coolest. And Aunt Rhoda is one of
+those people who are never sleepy. She will sit us out, however
+late we are. Never mind. The banquet will be all the
+more classical and complete. Aunt Rhoda will be the skeleton.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne contrived to be happy all day, in spite of Mrs.
+Ferrers, who was particularly ungracious to her younger niece,
+while she was lavish of compliments and pretty speeches to
+the elder. The faithful slave Edgar was absent on duty—going
+to church twice with his mother; dining with her; devoted to
+her altogether, or as much as he could be with a heart that
+longed to be elsewhere. But Daphne hardly missed him.
+Gerald Goring was in high spirits, full of life and talk and fun,
+as if he too had made up his mind that this great day in the
+Christian calendar should be a day of rejoicing for him. They
+all went to church together in the morning, and admired the
+decorations, which owed all their artistic beauty to Madoline’s
+taste, and were in a large measure the work of her own industrious
+fingers. They joined reverently in the Liturgy, and
+listened patiently to the Rector’s sermon, in which he aired a
+few of those good old orthodox truisms which have been repeated
+time out of mind by rural incumbents upon Christmas
+mornings.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon they all three went on a round of visits to
+Madoline’s cottagers—those special, old-established families
+to whose various needs, intellectual and corporeal, she had
+ministered from her early girlhood, and who esteemed a Christmas
+visit from Miss Lawford as the highest honour and privilege
+of the year. It was pleasant to look in at the tidy little keeping-rooms,
+where the dressers shone with a bright array of
+crockery, and the hearths were so neatly swept, and the pots and
+pans and brass candlesticks on the chimney-piece, and the little
+black-framed scriptural pictures, were all decorated with sprigs
+of ivy and holly. Pleasant the air of dinner and dessert which
+pervaded every house. Daphne had a basket of toys for the
+children; a basket which Gerald insisted upon carrying, looking
+into it every now and then, and affecting an intense curiosity as
+to the contents. The sky was dark, save for one low red streak
+above the ragged edge of the wooded lane, when they went back
+to afternoon tea: and what a comfortable change it was from
+the wintry world outside to Madoline’s flowery morning-room,
+heavy with the scent of hyacinths and Parma violets, and bright
+with blazing logs! The low Japanese tea-table was drawn in
+front of the fire, and the basket-chairs stood ready for the tea-drinkers.</p>
+
+<p>‘I was afraid Aunt Rhoda would be here to tea,’ said
+Daphne, sinking into her favourite seat on the fender-stool, in
+the shadow of the draped mantelpiece. ‘Is it not delicious
+to have this firelight hour all to ourselves? I always feel that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</span>
+just this time—this changeful light—stands apart from the rest
+of our lives. Our thoughts and fancies are all different somehow.
+They seem to take the rosy colour out of the fire; they
+are dim and dreamy and full of change, like the shadows on the
+wall. <em>We</em> are different. Just now I feel as if I had not a care.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And have you many cares at other times?’ asked Gerald
+scoffingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘A few.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The fear that your ball-dress may not fit; or that some
+clumsy fox-hunting partner may smash the ivory fan which
+Lina gave you yesterday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward,’ answered
+Daphne sententiously. ‘Do you think, because I live in a fine
+house, and have food and raiment found for me, that I do not
+know the meaning of care?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I should fancy there is a long way between your comprehension
+of the word and that of a Whitechapel seamstress:
+a widow, with five small children to keep, and a lodging to pay,
+upon the produce of her needle, with famine or the workhouse
+staring her in the face.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is the hour for telling ghost-stories,’ exclaimed Daphne,
+kneeling at her sister’s side to receive her cup and saucer, and
+trifling daintily with the miniature Queen Anne tongs as she
+helped herself to sugar. ‘Lina, tell us the story of this house.
+It ought to be haunted.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am thankful to say I have never heard of any ghosts,’
+answered Madoline. ‘Every house that has been lived in fifty
+years must have some sad memories; but our dead do not come
+back to us, except in our dreams.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mr. Goring, I insist upon a ghost-story,’ said Daphne. ‘On
+this particular day—at this particular hour—in this delicious
+half-light, a story of some kind must be told.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I delight in ghost-stories—good grim old German legends,’
+answered Gerald languidly, looking deliciously comfortable in
+the depths of an immense armchair, so low that it needed the
+dexterity of a gymnast to enable man or woman to get in or
+out of it gracefully—a downy-cushioned nest when one was
+there. ‘I adore phantoms, and fiends, and the whole shopful;
+but I never could remember a story in my life.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You must tell one to-night,’ cried Daphne eagerly. ‘It need
+not be ghostly. A nice murder would do—a grisly murder. My
+blood begins to turn cold in advance.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sorry to disappoint you,’ said Gerald; ‘but although
+I have made a careful study of all the interesting murders of
+my age I could never distinctly remember details. I should
+get hideously mixed if I tried to relate the circumstances of a
+famous crime. I should confound Rush with Palmer, the Mannings
+with the Greenacres; put the pistol into the hand that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</span>
+used the knife; give the dagger to the man who pinned his
+faith on the bowl. Not to be done, Daphne. I am no <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">raconteur</i>.
+You or Lina had better amuse me. One of you can tell me a
+story—something classical—John Gilpin, or the Old Woman
+with her Pig.’</p>
+
+<p>‘John Gilpin! a horridly cheerful singsong ballad—and in
+such a fantastic dreamy light as this! I wonder you have not
+more sense of the fitness of things. Besides, it is your duty to
+amuse us. A story of some kind we must have, mustn’t we,
+Lina dearest?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It would be very pleasant in this half-light,’ answered Lina
+softly, quite happy, sitting silently between those two whom she
+loved so dearly, pleased especially at Daphne’s brightness and
+good-humour, and apparently friendly feeling for Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘You hear,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘Your liege lady commands
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A story,’ mused Gerald in his laziest tone, with his head
+lying back on the cushions, and his eyes looking dreamily up at
+the ceiling, where the lights and shadows came and went so
+fantastically. ‘A story, ghostly or murderous, tragical, comical,
+amorous, sentimental—well, suppose now I were to tell you a
+classical story, as old as the hills, or as the laurel-bushes in your
+garden, the story of your namesake Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Namesake!’ echoed the girl, with her golden head resting
+against the arm of her sister’s chair, her eyes gravely contemplative
+of the fire. ‘Had I ever a namesake? Could there be
+another set of godfathers and godmothers in the world stupid
+enough, or hard-hearted enough, to give an unconscious innocent
+such a name as mine?’</p>
+
+<p>‘The namesake I am thinking of lived before the days of
+godfathers and godmothers,’ answered Gerald, still looking up
+at the ceiling, with a dreamy smile on his face; ‘she was the
+daughter of a river-god and a naiad, a wild, free-born, untamable
+creature, beautiful as a dream, variable as the winds that
+rippled the stream from which her father took his name.
+Wooers had sought her, but in vain. She loved the wood and
+the chase, all free and sylvan delights—the unfettered life of a
+virgin. She emulated the fame of Diana. She desired to live
+and die apart from the rude race of men—a woodland goddess
+among her maidens. Often her father said: “Daughter, thou
+owest me a son.” Often her father said: “Child, thou owest
+me grandchildren.” She, with blushing cheeks, hung on her
+father’s neck, and repulsed the torch of Hymen, as if it were
+a crime to love. “Let me, like Diana, live unwedded,” she
+pleaded. “Grant me the same boon Jove gave his daughter.”
+“Sweet one,” said the father, “thy duty forbids the destiny
+thy soul desires. Love will find thee out.” The river-god
+spoke words of fatal truth. Love sought Daphne, and he came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</span>
+in a godlike form. Phœbus Apollo was the lover. Phœbus,
+the spirit of light, and music, and beauty. He saw her, and
+all his soul was on fire with love. The dupe of his own oracles,
+he hoped for victory. He saw Daphne’s hair floating carelessly
+upon the wind; the eyes, like shining stars; the sweet
+lips, which it was pain to see and not to kiss. But lighter
+than the wind the cruel nymph fled from him. In vain he
+called her, in vain he tried to stop her. “Stay, sweet one,”
+he cried, “it is no enemy who pursues thee. So flies the
+lamb the wolf, the hind the lion, the trembling dove from the
+strong-winged eagle. But ’tis love bids me follow. Stay thy
+steps, suspend thy flight, and I will slacken my pursuit. Foolish
+one, thou knowest not whom thou fliest. No rude mountaineer,
+or ungainly shepherd pursues thee, but a god before whose law
+Delphos, Claros, and Tenedos obey; the son of high Jove himself;
+the deity who reveals the past, the present, and the future;
+who first wedded song to the stringed lyre. My arrows are
+deadly, but a deadlier shaft has pierced my heart.” Thus and
+much more he pleaded, yet Daphne still fled from him, heedless
+of the briers that wounded her naked feet, the winds that lifted
+her flowing hair. The breathless god could no longer find words
+of entreaty. Maddened by love he followed in feverish haste;
+he gained on her; his breath touched her floating tresses. The
+inexorable nymph felt her strength failing; with outstretched
+arms, with beseeching eyes, she appealed to the river: “Oh,
+father, if thy waves have power to save me, come to my aid!
+Oh, mother earth, open and fold me in thine arms, or by some
+sudden change destroy the beauty that subjects me to outrage.”
+Scarcely was the prayer spoken when a heavy torpor crept over
+her limbs; the nymph’s lovely shoulders covered themselves
+with a smooth bark; her hair changed to leaves; her arms to
+branches; her feet, a moment before so agile, became rooted to
+the ground. Yet Phœbus still loved. He felt beneath the bark
+of the tree the heart beat of the nymph he adored; he covered
+the senseless tree with his despairing kisses; and then, when he
+knew that the nymph was lost to him for ever, he cried: “If
+thou canst not be my wife, thou shalt be at least Apollo’s sacred
+tree. Laurel, thou shalt for ever wreathe my hair, my lyre, my
+quiver. Thou shalt crown Rome’s heroes; thy sacred branches
+shall shelter and guard the palace of her Cæsars; and as the
+god, thy lover, shines with the lustre of eternal youth, so, too,
+shalt thou preserve thy beauty and freshness to the end of time.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor Daphne,’ sighed Lina.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor Apollo, I think,’ said Gerald; ‘he was the loser. What
+do you think of my story, Mistress Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I rather like my namesake,’ answered Daphne deliberately.
+‘She was thorough. When she pretended to mean a thing she
+really did mean it. There is a virtue in sincerity.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘And obstinacy is a vice,’ said Gerald. ‘I consider the river-god’s
+daughter a pig-headed young person, whose natural coldness
+of heart predisposed her to transformation into a vegetable.
+Apollo made too much of her.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘I DEME THAT HIRE HERTE WAS FUL OF WO.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All</span> the servants at South Hill were old servants. Sir Vernon
+was a stern and an exacting master, but he only asked fair
+change for his shilling. He did not expect to reap where he had
+not sown, nor to gather where he had not strewed. His household
+was carried on upon a large and liberal scale, and the servants
+had privileges which they would hardly have enjoyed
+elsewhere. Therefore, with the disinterested fidelity of their
+profession, and of the human race generally, they stayed with
+him, growing old and gray in his service.</p>
+
+<p>Among these faithful followers was one who made a stronger
+point of her fidelity than any of the others, and affected a certain
+superiority to all the rest. This was Mowser, Madoline’s
+own maid, who had been maid to Lady Lawford until her death,
+and who, on that melancholy event, had taken upon herself the
+office of nurse to the orphan girl. That she was faithful to
+Madoline, and strongly attached to Madoline, there could be no
+doubt; but it was rather hard upon the outstanding balance of
+humanity that she could consider herself privileged by reason of
+this attachment to be as disagreeable as she pleased to everyone
+else.</p>
+
+<p>In those early days of Madoline’s infancy Mowser had taken
+possession of the nurseries as her own domain—belonging to her
+by some sovereign right of custodianship, as entirely hers as if
+they had been her freehold. Strong in her convictions on this
+point, she had resented all intrusion from the outer world; she
+had looked daggers at innocent visitors who were brought to
+see the baby; she had carried on war to the knife—a war of
+impertinences and uncivil looks—with Aunt Rhoda, firmly possessed
+by the idea that an aunt was an outsider as compared with
+a nurse.</p>
+
+<p>‘Didn’t I sit up night after night with her when she had the
+scarlet-fever, and go without my sleep and rest for a fortnight?’
+said the faithful one, expatiating vindictively upon her wrongs,
+in the conversational freedom of the servants’-hall. ‘Will any
+of your fine ladies of fashion do that?’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Spicer was of opinion that some might, but not Miss
+Rhoda Lawford. She was a great deal too fond of her own
+comfort.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mowser was not a woman of high culture. She had begun
+the battle of life early, and was too old to have been subject
+to the exactions of the School Board. She had been born and
+bred in a Warwickshire village, and educated five-and-thirty
+years ago at a Warwickshire dame school. Gerald told Daphne
+that he had no doubt Mowser had every whit as much book-learning
+as Shakespeare’s mother, Mary Arden. She was not
+averse from the use of fine words, but pronounced them after
+her own fancy. All unauthorised visitors to the nursery she
+denounced as antelopes, meaning, it was supposed, not the graceful
+animal of the stag species usually known by that name, but
+the more obnoxious human individual commonly called an interloper.
+Even Daphne, when she took the liberty to be born, and
+was brought by her own particular nurse to Mowser’s nursery,
+was looked upon as belonging in some wise to the antelope
+family; while the strange nurse was, of course, a thoroughbred
+specimen of that race. While Daphne was an infant, and the
+second nurse remained, there were fearful wars and rumours of
+wars in Mowser’s apartments, and exultantly did that injured
+female lift up her voice when Daphne went to her first school—at
+an age when few children of the landed gentry are sent to
+school—and the unsanctified nurse departed. She came a Pariah,
+and she went a Pariah—a creature under a ban.</p>
+
+<p>‘Now I can breathe free,’ exclaimed Mowser, after she had
+ostentatiously opened the windows and aired the nurseries, as
+in a Jewish household windows and doors are flung wide when
+the spirit has departed. ‘I felt almost stuffocated while she was
+here.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon, seeing very little of Mowser, and knowing that
+she was a devoted nurse to his beloved elder daughter, had
+troubled himself very little about such complaints of her ‘tempers’
+as from time to time reached his ears. He discouraged all
+fault-finding in his sister upon principle. So long as everything
+in the house, which concerned himself and his own comfort, went
+on velvet, he was unaffected by the fact that the servants made
+themselves disagreeable to other people. It was no matter to
+him that Spicer had been abominably impertinent to Aunt
+Rhoda in the morning, provided his dinner were well cooked in
+the evening. Nor did Rhoda’s raven croakings about the profligate
+wastefulness of his household distress him. He knew
+what he was spending, and that his expenses were so nearly on a
+level with his income that he always seemed poor: but though
+he liked to growl and grumble after every inspection of his
+banker’s book, he hated to be worried about pounds of butter,
+and quarts of milk, and dozens of eggs, by his sister.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you pretend to keep my house, Rhoda, you must keep it
+quietly, and not plague me about these disgusting details,’ he
+said savagely; whereat Rhoda shrugged her elegant shoulders,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</span>
+and protested that if her brother liked to be cheated it was of
+course no business of hers to step in between him and the depredators.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t like to be cheated, but I like still less to be worried,’
+said Sir Vernon decisively; and Rhoda was wise enough to
+carry on the struggle no longer.</p>
+
+<p>She had her own comfort and her own advantage to consider,
+and she troubled her brother no further about domestic
+difficulties: but she carried on her war with the enemy vigorously
+notwithstanding—fiercest of all with Mowser, who looked
+upon Miss Lawford as the very head and front of the antelope
+tribe.</p>
+
+<p>Mowser was a servant of the old school. She prided herself
+upon the manners and habits of a past generation. She wore
+corkscrew ringlets, and a cap trimmed with real Buckinghamshire
+lace—none of your Nottingham machine-made stuff for
+Mowser. Her petticoats were short and scanty, and her side-laced
+cashmere boots were a relic of the past. She wore an
+ostentatious gold chain round her neck, and a portly silver watch
+at her side. She was rarely seen without a black-silk apron,
+which rustled exceedingly. She was of a bony figure, her face
+sharp and angular, her eyes a cold hard-looking gray.</p>
+
+<p>When Madoline left the nursery Mowser resumed her original
+function of lady’s-maid. She had no particular gifts for the
+office. She had no taste for millinery; she had no skill in
+hair-dressing. She had been chosen by Madoline’s mother—a
+young lady of very simple habits—on account of her respectability
+and local status. She was the daughter of Old Mrs. Somebody,
+who had been thirty years a servant in the first Lady
+Lawford’s family. The houses of the menial and the mistress
+had been allied for a century or so; and for this reason, rather
+than for any other, Jane Mowser had been considered eligible
+for the office of maid.</p>
+
+<p>She was active and industrious, kept her mistress’s wardrobe
+and her mistress’s dressing-room in exquisite order. She could
+wash and mend laces to perfection. She could pack, and unpack,
+and was a devoted attendant in illness. But here her powers
+found their limit. The milliner and the dressmaker had to do
+all the rest. Mowser had no more taste than any villager in her
+native hamlet; no capacity for advising or assisting her mistress
+in any of the details of the toilet. She looked upon all
+modern fashions as iniquities which were perpetually inviting
+from heaven a re-issue of that fiery rain which buried Sodom
+and Gomorrah. To Mowser’s mind, jersey jackets and eel-skin
+dresses, idiot fringes and Toby frills, were the fulfilment of the
+prophet Isaiah’s prophecy. These were the ‘changeable suits of
+apparel, the mantles, and the tires, and the crisping pins, the
+mufflers, and round-tires like the moon;’ and all these things<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</span>
+were the forecast of some awful doom. It might be earthquakes,
+or floods, or a hideous concatenation of railway accidents, or the
+exhaustion of our coal mines, or the total failure of butcher’s
+meat by reason of the foot-and-mouth disease. Mowser did not
+know what form the scourge would take; but she felt that retribution,
+prompt and dire, must follow the reign of painted faces,
+jersey bodies, and tight-fitting skirts. Young women could not
+be allowed so to display their figures with impunity. Providence
+had an eye on their sham complexions and borrowed locks.</p>
+
+<p>All picturesqueness of attire Mowser resented as a play-actress
+style of dress, altogether degrading to a respectable
+mind. She objected to Daphne’s neatly-fitting, tailor-made
+gowns, her soft creamy muslins, relieved by dashes of vivid
+colour, and thought they would end badly. Not so did young
+ladies dress in Mowser’s youth. Small-patterned striped or
+checked silks, with neat laced berthas fitting close to modestly-covered
+shoulders, were then the mode. There was none of that
+artistic coquetry which gives to every woman’s dress a distinctive
+character, marking her out from the throng.</p>
+
+<p>Vainly did Mowser sigh for those vanished days, the simplicity,
+the high thinking and plain living, of her girlhood. Here
+was Mrs. Ferrers wasting the Rector’s substance upon gowns
+which five-and-twenty years ago would have been considered
+extravagant for a duchess; here was Daphne dressing herself
+up—with Madoline’s approval—to look as much as possible like
+a play-actress or an old picture.</p>
+
+<p>Mowser was no fonder of Daphne now than she had been in
+the days when the unwelcome addition to the nursery was stigmatised
+as an ‘antelope.’ There was still a good deal of the
+antelope about Daphne, in Mowser’s opinion. ‘It would have
+been better for all parties if Miss Daphne had stayed a year or
+two longer at her finishing school,’ Mowser remarked sententiously
+in the housekeeper’s room, where she was regarded, or at
+any rate was known to regard herself, as an oracle. ‘First and
+foremost, she hasn’t half finished her education.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Haven’t she, Mowser?’ asked Jinman, Sir Vernon’s own
+man, with a malicious twinkle in his eye. ‘How did you find
+out that? Have you been putting her through her paces?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Mr. Jinman; but I hope I know whether a young
+lady’s education is finished, without the help of book-learning.
+My mother was left a lone widow before I was three years old,
+and I hadn’t the opportunities some people have had, and might
+have made better use of. But I know what a young lady ought
+to be, and what she oughtn’t to be; and I say Miss Daphne
+leans most to the last. Why, her manners are not half formed.
+She goes rushing about the house like a whirlwind; always in
+high spirits, or in the dumps—no mejum.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s dev’lish pretty,’ said Jinman, who, on the strength of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</span>
+having spent a good deal of time with his master at Limmer’s
+Hotel, put on a metropolitan and somewhat rakish air.</p>
+
+<p>‘She’s not fit to hold a candle to my mistress,’ retorted
+Mowser.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not such a reg’lar style of beauty, perhaps, but more taking,
+more “chick,”’ said the valet.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know what you mean by “chick.” She’s a born
+flirt. Perhaps that’s what you mean. She’s her mother all
+over, worse luck for her! the same ways, the same looks, the
+same tones of voice. I wish she was out of the house. I never
+feel safe or comfortable about her. She’s like a dagger hanging
+over my head; and I don’t know when she may drop.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It’s a pity she refused young Turchill,’ said Jinman. ‘He’s
+the right sort. But as he still hangs on, I suppose she means to
+have him sooner or later.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, she don’t. <em>That’s</em> not her meaning,’ answered Mowser
+with significance.</p>
+
+<p>‘What does she mean, then?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know what she means. I know her; much better than
+her poor innocent sister does. Masks and artifexes ain’t no use
+with me. I can read her. Mr. Turchill ain’t good enough for
+her. She wants someone better than him. But she won’t succeed
+in her mackinventions, while Mowser is by to file her—double-faced
+as she is.’</p>
+
+<p>There was a subtlety about Mowser this evening which her
+fellow-servants were hardly able to follow. They all liked
+Daphne, for her pretty looks and bright girlish ways, yet, with
+that love of slander and mystery which is common to humanity
+in all circles, they rather inclined to hear Mowser hint darkly at
+the girl’s unworthiness. They all preferred the slandered to the
+slanderer; but they listened all the same.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>And now Christmas was over, and the night of the Hunt
+Ball at Stratford was approaching. It was to be Daphne’s first
+public appearance; first dance; first grown-up party of any
+kind. She was to see the county people assembled in a multitude
+for the first time in her life. A few of them she had seen
+by instalments at South Hill—callers and diners. She had been
+invited by these to various lawn parties: but her sister had refused
+all invitations of this kind, wishing that the occasion of
+Daphne’s <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">début</i> should be something more brilliant than a mere
+garden party, a fool’s paradise of curates and young ladies.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked forward to the night with excitement, but
+excitement of that fitful kind which was common to her—now on
+the tiptoe of expectation, anon not caring a straw for the entertainment.
+There had been the usual talk about gowns; and
+Aunt Rhoda had insisted upon coming over to South Hill to give
+her opinion.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘White, of course, for the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débutante</i>,’ said Madoline. ‘There
+can be no question about that.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers screwed up her lips in a severe manner, and
+looked at Daphne with a coldly critical stare.</p>
+
+<p>‘White is so very trying,’ she said, as if Daphne’s were not
+a beauty that could afford to be tried; ‘and then it has such a
+bridal air. I daresay there will be half-a-dozen brides at the
+ball. I know of two—Mrs. Toddlington, and Mrs. Frank
+Lothrop.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think Daphne need fear comparison with either of
+those,’ answered Madoline, looking fondly at her sister, who was
+sitting on a cushion at her feet, turning over a book of fashion
+plates. ‘Well, darling, do you see anything there you would like?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nothing. Every one of the dresses is utterly hideous;
+stiff, elaborate; fantastical, without being artistic; gaged and
+puffed and pleated, and festooned and fringed and gimped.
+Please dress me for the ball as you have always dressed me, out
+of your own head, Lina, without any help from Miss Piper’s
+fashion plates.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shall I, dear? Would you really prefer that to choosing
+something in the very last fashion?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Infinitely.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I’ll tell you what it shall be. I will dress you like a
+portrait by Sir Joshua. The richest white satin that money can
+buy, made as simply as Miss Piper can possibly be persuaded to
+make it. A little thin lace, cloudlike, about your neck and arms,
+and my small pearl necklace for your only ornament.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Madoline, do you think it is wise of you to let Daphne
+appear in borrowed plumes?’ asked Mrs. Ferrers severely. ‘It
+may be giving her wrong ideas.’</p>
+
+<p>‘They shall not be borrowed plumes. The necklace shall be
+my New Year’s gift to you, Daphne, darling.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, no, Lina. I am not going to despoil you of your
+jewels. I have always thought it was dreadfully bad of the
+Jewesses to swindle the Egyptians before they crossed the Red
+Sea, even though they were told to do it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’ screamed Aunt Rhoda; ‘your profanity is something
+too shocking.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My pet, I am not going to be contradicted,’ said Lina, not
+remarking upon this reproof. ‘The little necklace is yours
+henceforward. I have more jewellery than I can ever wear.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was your mother’s, Madoline, and you ought to respect
+it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was my mother’s nature to give, and not to hoard, Aunt
+Rhoda. She would have been ashamed of a selfish daughter.
+Will that do, Daphne? The white satin and old Mechlin lace,
+and just one spray of stephanotis in your hair?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Nothing could be prettier, Lina.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What are you going to wear yourself, Madoline?’ asked
+Mrs. Ferrers with a dissatisfied air. ‘I suppose you are going to
+indulge in a new gown.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have hardly made up my mind to be so extravagant.
+There is the gold-coloured satin I had for the dinner at Warwick
+Castle.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Much too heavy for a ball. No, you must have something
+new, Lina, if it be only to keep me in countenance. I had
+quite made up my mind to wear that pearl-gray sicilienne which
+you all so much admired; but the Rector insisted upon my getting
+a new gown from Paris.’</p>
+
+<p>‘From Worth?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can you suppose I could be so extravagant? No, Lina;
+when I venture upon a French gown I get it from a little
+woman on a third floor in the Rue Vivienne. She was Worth’s
+right hand some years ago, and she has quite his style. I tell
+her what colours I should like, and how much money I am prepared
+to spend, and she does all the rest without giving me any
+trouble.’</p>
+
+<p>It was decided that Madoline should have a new gown of
+the palest salmon, or blush-rose colour; something which would
+look well with a profusion of those exquisite tea-roses which
+MacCloskie produced grudgingly in the winter-tide, burning as
+much coal in the process as if he were steaming home from
+China with the first of the tea-gatherings, and wanted to be
+beforehand with the rest of the trade. Mrs. Ferrers made a
+good many objections to Daphne’s white satin, and was convinced
+it would be unbecoming to her; also that it would be wanting
+in style; yet it would be conspicuous, if not positively <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">outré</i>.
+But Lina had made up her mind, and was a person of considerable
+decision on occasions. Whatever the colour or material
+chosen, Aunt Rhoda would have objected to it, as she had not
+been called upon to advise in the matter.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Lina, my dear, I must go home and give the Rector
+his afternoon tea,’ she said, rising and putting on her fur-lined
+mantle. ‘I might have spared myself the trouble of walking
+over to discuss the ball dresses. You haven’t wanted my advice.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was very sweet of you to come all the same, auntie,’
+said Lina, kissing her, ‘and we might have wanted you badly.
+Besides, your advice is going to be taken. It is to please you
+that I am going to have a new gown—which I really don’t
+want.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Be sure Miss Piper makes your waist longer. The last was
+too short. She is not a patch upon my little Frenchwoman.
+But you are so bent upon employing the people about you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I like to spend my money near home, auntie.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Even if you are rewarded by being made a guy. Well, at
+your age, and with your advantages, you can afford to be careless.
+I can’t.’</p>
+
+<p>New Year’s Day passed very quietly. There was much less
+fuss about the new year at South Hill than there had been at
+Madame Tolmache’s twelve months ago; where the young
+ladies had prepared a stupendous surprise—of which she was
+perfectly aware a month beforehand—for that lady, in the shape
+of an embroidered sofa-cushion; and where the pupils presented
+each other with boxes of sweetmeats, and gushed exceedingly, in
+sentiments appropriate to the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Except that Daphne found the pearl necklace in a little old-fashioned
+red morocco case under her pillow when she awoke on
+that first dawn of the year, the day might have been the same as
+other days. She sat up in her little curtainless bed, with the
+necklace in her hand, looking straight before her, into the
+wintry landscape, into the new year.</p>
+
+<p>‘What is it going to be like for me? What is it going to
+bring me?’ she asked herself, her eyes slowly filling with tears,
+her face and attitude, even to the listless hand which loosely
+held the string of pearls, expressive of a dejection that was akin
+to despair. ‘What will this new-born year bring me? Not
+happiness. No, that could not be—that can never be. I lost the
+hope of that a year and a half ago—on one foolish, never-to-be-forgotten
+summer day. If I had died before that day—if I had
+taken the fever like those other girls, and had it badly, and
+died of it, would it not have been a better fate than to be always
+fluttering on the edge of happiness; wickedly, wildly happy
+sometimes when I am with him—wretched when he is away;
+guilty always—guilty to her, my best and my dearest; shameful
+to myself; lost to honour; conscience-stricken, miserable?’</p>
+
+<p>Her tears fell thick and fast now, and for some moments she
+wept passionately, greeting the new year with tears. Then,
+growing calmer, she lifted the pearls to her lips, and kissed them
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>‘It shall be a talisman,’ she said to herself. ‘White gift
+from a white soul, pure and perfect as the giver. Yes, it shall
+be a charm. I will sin no more. I will think of him no more
+of whom to think is sin. I will shut him out of my heart.
+My love, I will forget you! My love, who held my hand that
+summer day, and read my fate there—an evil fate—yes, for is
+it not evil to love you? my love, who stole my heart with sweet
+low words and magical looks—looks and words that meant
+nothing to you, but all the world—more than the world—to me.
+Oh, I must find some way of forgetting you. I must teach myself
+to be proud. It is so mean, so degrading, to go on loving
+where I have never been loved. If he knew it, how he would
+despise me! I would die rather than he should know!’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</span></p>
+
+<p>Hard to face a new-born year in such a temper as this, with
+a heart heavily burdened by a fatal secret; all the world, to
+outward seeming, smiles and sunshine. For what care could
+such a girl as Daphne have, a girl who had no more need for
+the serious consideration of life than the lilies have? All
+without sunshine and turtle-doves; all within, darkness and
+scorpions.</p>
+
+<p>When she was dressed, save for the putting on of her warm
+winter gown, Daphne clasped the necklace round her throat.
+The pearls were not whiter or more perfectly shaped than the
+neck they clasped.</p>
+
+<p>‘I must wear my talisman always,’ she thought, as she
+fastened the snap. ‘Let me be like the prince in the fairy tale,
+whose ring used to remind him by a sharp little stab when he
+was drifting into sin.’</p>
+
+<p>She went downstairs in a somewhat more cheerful mood
+than that of her first awaking. There was comfort in the
+pearls. She kissed her sister lovingly, kneeling by her side as
+she thanked her for the New Year’s gift. There was an open
+jewel-case on the breakfast-table, and beside it a basket of
+summer flowers—a basket that had come straight from the
+sunny south, from the winterless flower-gardens on the shores
+of the Mediterranean.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at the jewels first—a low thing in human
+nature, but inevitable. The case contained a sapphire cross,
+the stones large and lustrous, perfect in their deep azure, and set
+in the lightest, most delicate mounting—a cross which a princess
+might hold choicest amongst all her jewels. The flowers were
+roses, camellias, violets, and a curious thorny-stemmed orange-blossom.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Lina,’ cried Daphne; ‘orange-blossom with thorns!
+Isn’t that an evil omen?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope not, dear, but I like the other kind best. This is
+almost too spiky to put in a flower-glass. But wasn’t it good of
+Gerald to get these flowers sent over from Nice for a New
+Year’s greeting?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, it was he who sent them?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who else? There was a little note at the bottom of the
+basket; and see, this lovely camellia bud is labelled “For
+Daphne.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘“There’s rue for you,”’ quoted Daphne, with her half bitter
+smile. ‘Yes, it was very polite of him to remember my
+existence.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There is something else for you, darling—a locket, which
+Gerald asks me to give you from him. He hopes you will wear
+it at your first ball.’</p>
+
+<p>She opened a small blue velvet case, and Daphne beheld
+an oval locket of dead dull gold with a diagonal band of sapphires.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</span>
+It had a kind of moonlight effect which was very fascinating.</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Daphne gently, but with unmistakable resolve;
+‘I will accept jewels from no one but you. You can afford to
+give me all I shall ever want, and it is a pleasure to you to
+give—I know that, dearest—and to me to receive. I cannot
+accept Mr. Goring’s gift, although I appreciate his kindness in
+offering it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne! He will be dreadfully wounded.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, he won’t. He will understand that I have a touch of
+pride. From my sister all the benefits in the world; but from
+him nothing—except this cold white bud!’</p>
+
+<p>She put it to her lips involuntarily, unconsciously; but the
+contact of the flower he had touched thrilled her with mysterious
+passion—as if it were his very soul that touched her soul. She
+shivered and turned pale.</p>
+
+<p>‘My pet, you are looking so ill this morning, so cold and
+wretched,’ said Madoline, looking up from fond contemplation
+of her lover’s gifts just in time to see that white wan look of
+Daphne’s.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am well enough, but it is a cold wretched morning,’
+answered Daphne, as she bent over the fire, spreading out her
+dimpled hands before the blaze. ‘Don’t you think New Year’s
+Day is a horrid anniversary?—beginning everything over again
+from a fresh starting-point; tempting one to think about the
+future; obliging one to look back at the past and be sorry for
+having wasted another year. You will go to church, I suppose,
+and take your dose of remorse in an orthodox form!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Won’t you come with me, Daphne? Everyone ought to go
+to church on New Year’s Day, even if it were not a sacred
+anniversary.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I’ll come, if you like. I may as well be there as anywhere
+else.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My darling, is that the way to speak or to think about
+it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know. I’m afraid I am desperately irreligious. If
+I had ever found religion do me any good I might be more
+seriously-minded, perhaps. But when I pray, my prayers seem
+to come back to me unheard. I am always asking for bread,
+and getting a stone.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, there can be but one reason for that. You do not
+pray rightly. Constant, fervent prayer never failed yet to bring
+a blessing: perhaps not the very blessing we have asked for, but
+something purer, higher—the peace of God which passeth all
+understanding. That for the most part is God’s answer to
+faithful prayer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps that is it. I pray in a half-hearted way. “My
+words fly up, my thoughts remain below.” I am anchored too<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</span>
+heavily to this wicked world. I stretch out my hands to heaven,
+but not my heart: that is of the earth earthy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Come to church, dear, and this solemn day will bring serious
+thoughts.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I would go if it were only for the sake of going a little way
+towards heaven with you. Yes, Lina dearest, I will go and
+kneel by your side, and pray to become more like you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A poor example,’ answered Madoline, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>And now Sir Vernon entered, pale and drawn after his late
+illness, but erect and dignified. There were no family prayers
+at South Hill, and there never had been since the first Lady
+Lawford’s death. Sir Vernon went to church on Sunday morning,
+when he considered himself well enough, but all other
+religious offices he performed in the seclusion of his own rooms.
+There was therefore no morning muster for prayers, and the
+servants at South Hill were free to choose their own road to
+heaven.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline rose to greet her father with loving New Year
+wishes. Daphne kept her kneeling attitude by the fire, with
+her face turned towards the blaze, feeling that good wishes from
+her would be a superfluity.</p>
+
+<p>‘My years must always be happy while I have you, dearest,’
+said Sir Vernon, kissing his elder daughter; and then, with
+some touch of gentlemanly feeling, bethinking himself of the
+child he did not love, he laid his hand lightly on Daphne’s
+golden head.</p>
+
+<p>‘Good morning, Daphne. A happy New Year to you!’ he
+said gently.</p>
+
+<p>She silently turned from the fire, took her father’s hand, and
+raised it to her lips. It was the first time she had ever done
+such a thing: a little gush of spontaneous feeling, and the
+father’s heart was touched—touched, albeit, like all Daphne’s
+graces, this little bit of girlish graciousness recalled her mother’s
+fatal charms.</p>
+
+<p>‘“Bless me, even me also, O my father!”’ she exclaimed,
+recalling one of the most pathetic passages of Holy Writ.</p>
+
+<p>‘God bless and prosper you, my dear.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you, papa. That is a good beginning for the year,’
+said Daphne, stifling a sob. ‘I don’t think I shall feel like Esau
+any more.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, what comparisons you make,’ cried Madoline.
+‘In what have you ever been like Esau? Have I ever cheated
+you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not willingly, darling,’ answered Daphne, nestling close
+beside Madoline as she began to pour out Sir Vernon’s tea.
+‘You are my benefactress, my guardian angel. Is it your fault
+if I belong by nature and pedigree to the tribe of Ishmael?’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AL SODENLY SHE SWAPT ADOWN TO GROUND.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> second week of January was half over, and it was the
+night of the Hunt Ball. What girl of eighteen, were her breast
+ever so gnawed by secret cark and care, could refrain from
+giving way to some excitement upon the occasion of her first
+dance, and that a dance which was to be danced by all Warwickshire’s
+beauty and chivalry—a dance as distinguished, from a
+local standpoint, as that famous assembly in Belgium’s capital,
+which was scared by the thunder of distant guns, the prelude of
+instant war?</p>
+
+<p>Daphne gave herself up wholly to the delight of the hour.
+She had been unusually cheerful and equable in her temper
+since New Year’s Day. That parental blessing, freely and
+ungrudgingly given, seemed to have sweetened her whole nature.
+She went to church with Madoline, and prayed with all her
+heart and soul, and listened without impatience to a string of
+seasonable platitudes, culled from the elder divines, and pronounced
+in a humdrum style of elocution by the Reverend
+Marmaduke Ferrers. She had been altogether blameless in her
+bearing and her conduct in this new-fledged year: so much so
+that Mrs. Ferrers had deigned to concede, with chilly patronage,
+that Daphne was beginning to become a reasonable being.</p>
+
+<p>She had been fighting her inward battle honestly and bravely.
+She had avoided as much as possible that society which was so
+poisonously sweet to her. She had been less exacting to her
+devoted slave, Edgar. She had given more time to improving
+studies. She had taken up Mendelssohn’s Lieder, and practised
+them industriously, breathing, ah! too much soul into the
+pathetic passages, dwelling too fondly on the deep ground-swell
+of melody, which carries a passionate heart along on its fierce
+tide, and, in its fervid feeling and exaltation of spirit, is akin to
+the actual triumph of a happy love.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious of the danger, and resolutely bent on curing
+herself of a futile foolish attachment, she yet fed her passion
+with the fatal food of poetry and music, finding in every heroine
+she most admired, from Juliet to Enid, a love as inevitably
+doomed to misery as her own. But all the while she was
+earnest in her desire to forget.</p>
+
+<p>‘If my namesake, in the pride of her purity, could fly from
+a god who adored her, surely it cannot be hard for me to harden
+my heart against a man who does not care a straw for me,’ she
+told herself scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>The day of the Hunt Ball brought pleasure enough to thrust
+aside every other thought. Miss Piper had done as well as if
+she had been born and bred in Paris. Daphne’s white satin<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</span>
+gown fitted the slim and supple figure to perfection. It was not
+the ivory tint of late years, but that exquisite pearly white, with
+a blackish tint in the shadows, which one sees in old pictures.
+Daphne, with her wavy hair coiled at the back of her beautifully-shaped
+head, and with just one spray of stephanotis nestling in
+the coils, looked like a Juliet painted by Sir Joshua. It was
+Juliet’s dress, as Juliet used to be dressed by actresses of an age
+less given to the research of correctness and elaboration in costume.
+The single string of pearls on the pearly neck, the bodice
+modestly draping the lovely shoulders, the round white arms
+peeping from elbow-sleeves of satin and lace, the long loose
+gloves, the slender feet in white satin sandalled shoes, meant for
+dancing—not in those impossible high-heeled instruments of
+torture which Parisian bootmakers have inflicted on weak woman—all
+had something of an old-fashioned air; but it was a very
+lovely old fashion, and Madoline was delighted with the result.</p>
+
+<p>‘Rather <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">outré</i>, don’t you think?’ said Mrs. Ferrers, sourly
+contemplative of Daphne’s fresh young beauty, which made her
+own complexion look so much yellower than usual, when she
+happened to glance across the girl’s shoulder at her own face in
+the big cheval glass. ‘A little too suggestive of Kate Greenaway’s
+Baby Books.’</p>
+
+<p>She was trying to settle herself in her panoply of state, a
+gorgeous arrangement in ruby velvet and cream-coloured satin,
+which the little Frenchwoman in the Rue Vivienne had only
+sent off in time to reach Mrs. Ferrers two hours ago, after
+keeping her in an agony of mind for the last three days. It
+was a very splendid gown, so slashed, and draped, and festooned,
+that it was a mystery how it could ever be put together. The
+velvet cuirass was laced up the back with thick gold cord, and
+fitted like a strait-waistcoat; and the ruby scarf was fringed with
+heavy bullion, which drooped above a stormy sea of cream-coloured
+satin, that went billowing and surging round the lady’s
+legs till it met a long narrow streak of ruby velvet lined with
+satin, which meandered for about twelve feet along the floor.
+That Mrs. Ferrers must be a nuisance to herself and everybody
+else in such a dress no one in their senses could doubt; but then
+on the other hand the gown was undoubtedly in the latest fashion,
+and was one which must evoke a pang of envy in every female
+breast.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t wonder you look disdainfully at my short petticoats,
+Aunt Rhoda,’ said Daphne, smiling at the effect of her sandalled
+ankles as she pirouetted before the looking-glass; ‘but I think,
+when it comes to dancing, I shall be better off than you with your
+velvet train.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not likely to dance much,’ answered Mrs. Ferrers, with
+dignity. ‘Indeed, as a clergyman’s wife, I don’t know that I
+shall dance at all.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Then you will have to sit with your train coiled round your
+feet to prevent people walking on it, and that will be worse,’ retorted
+Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>It was a clear cold night, with a brilliant moon—a glorious
+night for a country drive—frosty, but not severe enough to make
+the roads slippery; besides, Boiler and Crock were the kind of
+horses that nobody hesitates to have roughed on occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon had decided on escorting his daughters to the
+ball. It was a sacrifice of his own ease and comfort, but he felt
+that the occasion required it.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall stay an hour,’ he said, ‘and then Rodgers can drive
+me home, and go back to fetch you later. It won’t hurt the
+horses going over the ground a second time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear father,’ said Madoline, ‘it is so good of you to go
+with us.’</p>
+
+<p>And now, after a reviving cup of tea, and careful wrapping
+in fur-lined cloaks and Shetland shawls, the three ladies and Sir
+Vernon conveyed themselves into the roomy landau, and were
+soon bowling along the smooth high-road towards Stratford.
+What a transformed and glorified place the little town seemed
+to-night—all lights, and people, and loud and authoritative constabulary!
+such an array of fiery-eyed carriages, three abreast
+in the wide street in front of The Red Horse! such a block in
+the narrower regions about the Town Hall! so much confusion,
+despite of such loud endeavours to maintain order!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Daphne as if they were going to sit in the carriage
+all night, with the humbler townsfolk peering in at them from
+the pavement, and making critical remarks to each other in
+painfully distinct voices.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ain’t the fair one pretty?’ ‘The dark one’s the handsomest.’
+‘My eye! look at the old lady’s diamonds.’ ‘That’s
+Lord Willerby.’ ‘No, it ain’t, stoopid.’ ‘I see the coronet on
+the kerridge.’ ‘My, what lovely hair she’s got!’ ‘White satin,
+ain’t it?’ and so on, while cornets and violins sounded in the
+distance with distracting melody.</p>
+
+<p>‘It’ll be dreadful if we have to sit in the street quite all the
+evening,’ said Daphne, listening hopelessly to the voice of authority,
+with its perpetual ‘Move on, coachman.’</p>
+
+<p>They waited about twenty minutes, and then slowly drove up
+to the doorway, where the eager faces of the crowd made a hedge
+on each side. Difficult to believe that this entrance hall, luminous
+with lamps and bright flowers, was the same which gave
+admittance to such prosaic beings as town-clerks and vestrymen,
+justices of the peace and policemen. Edgar and Gerald were
+both hovering near the doorway, waiting for the South Hill
+party: Edgar, at the risk of being accused of deserting his
+mother, whom he had established in a comfortable corner of the
+ball-room, and then incontinently left to her own reflections, or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</span>
+to such conversation as she might be able to find among sundry
+other dowagers arrived at the same wall-flower stage of existence.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you were never coming,’ said Edgar, offering
+Daphne his arm, and in a manner appropriating her.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought we were going to spend the evening in the street,’
+answered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald gave his arm to Madoline; Sir Vernon followed with
+his sister, whose high-heeled Louis Quinze shoes matched her
+gown to perfection, but were not adapted for locomotion. Happily
+she was a light and active figure, and managed to trip up
+the broad oak stairs somehow; though she felt as if her feet had
+been replaced by the primitive style of wooden leg, the mere
+dot-and-go-one drumstick, with which the Chelsea pensioner
+used to be accommodated before the days of elaborate mechanical
+arrangements in cork and metal.</p>
+
+<p>The ball-room was already crowded, the South Hill party
+having arrived late, by special desire of Aunt Rhoda, who strongly
+objected to be among those early comers who roam about empty
+halls dejectedly, taking the chill off the atmosphere for the late
+arrivals. Dancing was in full swing, and the assembly in the big
+ball-room made a blaze of colour against the delicate French-gray
+walls; the pink of the fox-hunters, and the uniforms of
+the officers from Warwick and Coventry, showing vividly amongst
+the pale and airy drapery of their partners. There were more
+than two hundred in the room already, Edgar told Daphne, as
+he pointed out the more striking features of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay there’ll be nearer three hundred before midnight,’
+he said. ‘It’s going to be a grand affair. Only once in two
+years, you see: people save themselves up for it. A lot of
+fellows in pink, aren’t they?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes. Why didn’t you wear a scarlet coat? It’s much prettier
+than black.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you really think so? If I’d known—’ faltered Edgar.
+‘But I felt sure you would have laughed at me if I’d sported
+the swallow-tail I wear at hunt dinners sometimes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay I should,’ Daphne answered coolly; ‘but you’d
+have looked ever so much nicer all the same.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar felt regretful. He had debated with himself that
+question of pink or no pink; and the thought of Daphne’s possible
+ridicule had turned the scale in favour of sober black; and
+now she told him he would have looked better in the more
+distinctive garb. And there were fellows who could hardly
+jump a drain-pipe showing off in their Poole or Smallpage coats,
+and giving themselves Nimrod airs which imposed upon the
+sweet simplicity of their partners.</p>
+
+<p>The room was a noble room, long and lofty, divided from a
+spacious antechamber by a wide square doorway, supported by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</span>
+classic pillars. Over this doorway was the open gallery for the
+band. The ball-room was lighted by a large central chandelier,
+and two sun-burners in the ceiling; while from lyre-shaped
+medallions on the walls projected modern gas brackets in imitation
+of old-fashioned girandoles of the wax-candle period.</p>
+
+<p>There were four full length portraits on the walls: the Duke
+of Dorset, by Romney; a portrait of Queen Anne, as uninteresting
+as that harmless lady was in the flesh. The remaining two
+pictures had to do with the local divinity. One was Gainsborough’s
+portrait of Garrick, leaning against the bust of Shakespeare;
+the other was the poet seated, in his habit as he lived,
+by Wilson.</p>
+
+<p>‘You see,’ said Gerald, close behind Daphne, ‘there is the
+Warwickshire idol. One can’t get away from him. Why can
+these bucolics worship nothing but the intellectual emanation of
+their soil? Why not a little homage to muscular Christianity, in
+the person of Guy, Earl of Warwick, a paladin of the first water,
+a man who rescued damsels, and fought with giants and dun
+cows, and was strong and brave, and faithful, pious, self-sacrificing,
+devoted in every act of his life? There is a hero worthy
+of worship. Yet you all ignore him, and bow down before this
+golden calf of a dramatist, who sued his friend for a twopenny
+loan, and left the wife of his bosom a second-best bedstead—a
+paltry fellow beside Guy, the hero-hermit, living on bread and
+water, and only revealing himself at his death to the wife he
+adored.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Guy was a very nice person, if one could quite believe in
+the giant and the dun cow,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe implicitly in Colbrand the giant,’ answered Gerald,
+‘but I own I have never been able to swallow the monster cow;
+and I am all the more inclined to repudiate her because her
+bones were on view at Warwick in Shakespeare’s time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And it was very sweet of him to end his days so quietly in
+the hermit’s cave at Guy’s Cliff,’ pursued Daphne, who was well
+versed in all Warwickshire lore, chiefly by oral instruction from
+Edgar, ‘and to take alms from his own wife every morning, as
+one of the thirteen beggars she was in the habit of relieving;
+though I have never quite understood why he did it. But in
+spite of all these grand acts of Guy’s we know nothing of the
+man himself, while Shakespeare is like one’s brother. He has
+sounded the deep of every mind, and has given us the treasures
+of his own.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I suspect he would rather have given anything than his
+money,’ retorted Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>They had penetrated to Mrs. Turchill’s corner by this time.
+That matron was looking the picture of disconsolate solitude—the
+dowager with whom she had been talking about her servants
+and her tradespeople having left her to look after a brace of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</span>
+somewhat go-ahead daughters, who in pale blue silk jerseys, and
+tight cream-coloured cashmere skirts, looked very much as if
+they were attired for some acrobatic performance.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so glad you have come,’ exclaimed poor Mrs. Turchill,
+brightening at the sight of Madoline. ‘The room is dreadfully
+crowded, and there are so many strangers.’ This was said resentfully,
+no stranger having any more right to be present, from
+Mrs. Turchill’s point of view, than Pentheus at his mother’s
+party. ‘I feel as if I hardly knew a creature here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, mother, when there are the Hilldrops, and the Westerns,
+and the Hilliers, and the Perkinses,’ remonstrated Edgar, running
+over a string of names.</p>
+
+<p>‘All I can say is that if there are any of my friends in the
+room no one has taken the trouble to bring them to me,’ retorted
+Mrs. Turchill. ‘And for any enjoyment I have had from the
+society of my friends I might as well be at that horrid Academy
+conversazione for which you took so much trouble to get tickets
+the year before last, and where I was jammed into a corner of
+the sculpture room half the evening, with rude young women
+sitting upon me.’</p>
+
+<p>Here Sir Vernon and Mrs. Ferrers approached, and Mrs.
+Turchill resumed her company smile in honour of people of such
+importance. Aunt Rhoda had been exchanging greetings with
+the cream of the county people during her leisurely progress
+through the rooms, and felt that her gown was a success, and
+that the little woman in the Rue Vivienne was worthy of her
+hire. Everybody was looking at Daphne. Her youth and freshness,
+her vivid smiles and natural girlish animation, as she conversed
+now with Edgar, and anon with Gerald, fascinated
+everyone; it was a manner entirely without reserve, yet with
+no taint of forwardness or coquetry—the manner of a happy
+child, whose sum of life was bounded by the delight of the
+moment, rather than of a woman conscious of her loveliness,
+and knowing herself admired.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who is that pretty girl in the white satin frock—the girl
+like an old picture?’ people were asking, somewhat to the annoyance
+of older stagers in the beauty-trade, who felt that here
+was a new business opened, which threatened competition, stock-in-trade
+of the best quality, and perfectly fresh.</p>
+
+<p>One young lady, whose charms had suffered the wear and
+tear of seven seasons, contemplated Daphne languidly through
+her eye-glass, and summed her up with scornful brevity as ‘the
+little Gainsborough girl!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite too lovely, for the next six months,’ said another,
+‘but her beauty depends entirely on her complexion. A year
+hence she will have lost all that brightness, and will be a very
+wishy-washy little person.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And then I suppose she’ll paint, as the others do, don’t you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</span>
+know,’ drawled her partner; ‘carmine her lips, and all that sort
+of thing.’</p>
+
+<p>The lady looked at him suspiciously out of the corner of a
+carefully darkened eyelid.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let us hope she won’t sink quite so low as that,’ she said
+with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>There was no doubt as to Daphne’s triumph. Before she
+had been an hour in the room, she was the acknowledged belle
+of the ball. People went out of their way to look at her. She
+walked once round the rooms on her father’s arm, and in that
+slow and languid progress held, as it were, her first court. It
+was her first public appearance; her father’s friends clustered
+round him, eager to be presented to the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">débutante</i>. Stately
+dowagers begged that she might be made known to them. All
+the best people in the room knew Sir Vernon, and all professed
+a friendly desire to know his younger daughter. Her card was
+full before she knew what she was doing.</p>
+
+<p>‘Our little Daphne is a success!’ said Gerald to his betrothed,
+as they glided round the room in a languorous troistemps.
+‘All the Apollos are running after her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so glad. Dear child! It is such a pleasure to see her
+happy,’ answered Madoline softly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope her head won’t be turned by all this adulation. It
+is such a poor little puff-ball of a head. I sometimes fancy she
+has thistledown inside it instead of brains.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed, dear, she has plenty of sense and serious feeling,’
+remonstrated Madoline, wounded by this allegation. ‘But she
+is painfully sensitive. She needs very tender treatment.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor butterfly!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you like her dress?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is simply perfect. Your taste, of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; she let me have my own way in the matter.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And as a reward she is looking her loveliest. It is not the
+calm beauty of a princess, like my Lina’s; but for a spoiled-child
+kind of prettiness, capricious, mutinous, variable, there
+could be nothing better.’</p>
+
+<p>Later he was at Daphne’s side, as she sat in a corner by her
+aunt, with half-a-dozen young men hovering near, Edgar nearest
+of all, holding her fan.</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose you have saved at least one dance for me,
+Empress,’ he said, taking her programme from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know. All sorts of people have been writing down
+their names.’</p>
+
+<p>‘All sorts of people,’ echoed Gerald, examining the card.
+‘You will be a little more respectful about your partners in
+your seventh or eighth season. Why, here, under various
+hieroglyphics, are the very topmost strawberries in the social
+basket—masters of fox-hounds, eldest sons of every degree,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</span>
+majors and colonels—and not one little waltz left for me! I
+claim you for the first extra.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I—I’m rather afraid I’m engaged for the extras.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No matter. You were solemnly engaged to me for one
+particular waltz when first this ball was spoken of at South Hill.
+You don’t remember, perhaps; but I do. I claim my bond. I
+will be a very Shylock in the exaction of my due.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you were a better Shakespearian it would occur to you
+that Shylock got nothing,’ retorted Daphne, smiling up at him.</p>
+
+<p>‘He was an old idiot. Remember, the first extra valse.
+We shall meet at Philippi.’</p>
+
+<p>He was off to claim Lina for the Lancers. It was the last
+dance before supper. Sir Vernon had disappeared ever so long
+ago. Mrs. Ferrers was standing up with a major of dragoons,
+in all the splendour of his uniform, and felt that she and her
+partner made an imposing picture. Edgar and Daphne were
+sitting out this square dance on the stairs, the girl somewhat
+exhausted by much waltzing, the man exalted to the seventh
+heaven of bliss at being permitted to bear her company.</p>
+
+<p>‘May I take you down to supper?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks; no. My last partner—the man in the red
+coat——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Clinton Chetwynd, master of the Harrowby Harriers?’
+interjected Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Told me that the best dancing will be when two-thirds of
+the people are gormandising downstairs. You can get me an
+ice, if you like.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar obeyed; but when he came back with the ice Daphne
+had vanished from the landing, and he got himself entangled in
+a block of people struggling down to supper.</p>
+
+<p>The rooms below—those solemn halls in which on ordinary
+occasions the local offender stood at the bar of justice to answer
+for his misdeeds—were now a scene of glitter and gaiety;
+flower-wreathed épergnes, barley-sugar pagodas, and all the
+tinselly splendour of a ball-supper. Bar, and bench, and magisterial
+chairs had vanished as if by magic. The magistrate’s
+private apartment and the justice hall had been thrown into one
+spacious banqueting-chamber, where even the proverbial greediness
+of the best society—the people who tread upon each other’s
+toes and rush for the grapes and peaches at Buckingham Palace—might
+be satisfied without undue scrambling. But though
+there would have been room for him at the banquet, and
+although there were any number of eligible young ladies waiting
+to be taken down, Edgar scorned the idea of a supper which
+Daphne did not care for. To have sat by her, squeezed into
+some impossible corner of a rout-seat, to have fought for lobster-salad
+for her, and guarded her frock from the ravages of awkward
+people, and pulled cracker bon-bons with her, would have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</span>
+been bliss; but the festal board without her would be every
+whit as funereal a banquet as the famous sable feast at which
+that cheerful practical joker Domitian entertained his courtiers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Turchill found a good-natured fox-hunter to take his
+mother down, and having seen that lady’s silver-gray satin—newly
+done up with violet velvet by Miss Piper for the occasion—making
+its deliberate way down the broad staircase, on the
+sportsman’s sturdy scarlet arm, Edgar went back to the almost
+empty ball-room, where about fifteen or twenty couples were
+revolving to the last sugary-sweet German waltz, ‘<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Glaubst du
+nicht</i>?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne and Gerald were amongst these; Madoline was sitting
+with some girl-friends in the entrance of one of the windows,
+and to this point Edgar made his way.</p>
+
+<p>‘You’ve not been down to supper,’ he remarked, by way of
+saying something original.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know, I don’t much care about going down. If
+Gerald particularly wishes it I shall go after this dance; but I
+think I should enjoy a sandwich and a cup of tea when I get
+home better than the scramble downstairs.’</p>
+
+<p>The waltzers were dropping off by degrees; but Gerald and
+Daphne still went on revolving with gliding languid steps to the
+dreamy melody. They moved in exquisite harmony, although
+this was the first time they had ever waltzed together. Never
+in the twilight dances at South Hill had Mr. Goring asked
+Daphne to be his partner. He had been content to stand outside
+in the porch, smoking his cigarette, and looking on, while
+she and Edgar waltzed, or to take a few lazy turns afterwards
+with Madoline to Daphne’s music. To-night for the first time
+his arm encircled her; her sunlit head rested against his
+shoulder. It seemed to him that his hand had never clasped
+hers since that summer day at Fontainebleau, just a year and a
+half ago; when they had stood by the golden water, with the
+hungry-eyed carp watching them, and a sky of molten gold
+above their heads. They had been far apart since that day;
+dissevered by an impalpable abyss; and now for the moment
+they were one, united by that love-sick melody, their pulses
+stirred by the same current. Was it strange that in such a
+moment Gerald Goring forgot all the world except this perfect
+flower of youth and girlhood which he held in his arms—forgot
+his betrothed wife, and all her grace and beauty; lived for the
+moment, and in the moment only, as butterflies live—with a
+past not worth remembering, and annihilation for their only
+future? As the dancers dropped off the band played slower and
+slower, meaning to expire in a <em>rallentando</em>, and those two
+waltzers gliding round drifted unawares into the outer and
+smaller room, where there was no one.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Glaubst du nicht</i>?’ sighed the band, ‘<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Glaubst du nicht</i>?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</span>
+<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Ach Liebchen, glaubst du nicht</i>?’ and with the last sigh of the
+melody, Gerald bent his lips over Daphne’s golden hair and
+breathed a word into her ear—only one word, wrung from him
+in despite of himself. But that one word so breathed from
+such lips was all the history of a passionate love which had
+been fought against in vain. The last sigh of the music faded
+as the word was spoken, and Daphne was standing by her
+partner’s side white as ashes.</p>
+
+<p>‘Take me back to my sister, please.’</p>
+
+<p>He gave her his arm without a word, and they walked
+slowly across to the group by the window; but before Madoline
+could make room for Daphne to sit by her side the girl
+tottered, and would have fallen, if Edgar had not caught her
+in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>‘She is fainting!’ he cried, alarmed. ‘Some water—brandy—something!’
+He wrenched open the window, still holding
+Daphne on his left arm. The frosty night-air blew in upon
+them, keen and cold. Daphne’s white lips trembled, and the
+dark gray eyes opened and looked round with a bewildered
+expression, as she sank slowly into the seat beside Madoline,
+whose arms were supporting and embracing her.</p>
+
+<p>‘My darling, you have danced too much. You have overexcited
+yourself,’ said Lina tenderly; while three or four smelling-bottles
+came to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; that last dance was too much,’ faltered Daphne,
+cold and trembling in her sister’s arms. ‘But I’m quite well
+now, Lina. It was nothing. The heat of the room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you are tired. We’ll go home directly we can find
+Aunt Rhoda.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll go and hunt for her,’ said Gerald, who had been standing
+vacantly looking on, his brain on fire, his heart beating
+tumultuously, the vulture conscience gnawing his vitals already.</p>
+
+<p>He had been thinking of Rousseau’s Julie, and that first
+kiss given in the bosquet—the fatal first kiss—the beginning
+of all evil.</p>
+
+<p>‘My sweeter Julie—so much more lovely—so much more
+innocent,’ he thought, as he went slowly downstairs in quest
+of the ruby velvet arrangement which contained Mrs. Ferrers.
+‘God give me grace to respect your purity!’</p>
+
+<p>The winter wind rushed into the heated ball-room with a
+sharp chill breath that was suggestive of another and a colder
+world, like the deadly air from a vault, and soon steadied
+Daphne’s reeling brain.</p>
+
+<p>‘You see I am not such a good waltzer as I thought I was,’
+she said, looking up at Edgar with a sickly smile. ‘I did not
+think anything could make me giddy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You would rather go home now, would you not, dear?’
+asked Madoline. ‘You have had enough of the ball.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘More than enough.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me fetch your wraps from the cloak-room,’ said Edgar.
+‘It will save you a good deal of trouble.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you would be so very kind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Delighted. Give me your ticket. Seventy-nine. All
+under one number, I suppose.’</p>
+
+<p>He ran off, and this time had to stem the tide setting in
+towards the ball-room; the young men and maidens who had
+eaten their supper and were eager for more dancing. Coming
+back with a pile of cloaks and shawls on his arm, he joined
+Gerald and Mrs. Ferrers, her red-coated major still in attendance.</p>
+
+<p>‘What can Daphne mean by making a spectacle of herself
+at her first ball?’ asked Aunt Rhoda, not a little aggrieved at
+being ruthlessly dragged away from a knot of the very best
+people, a little group of privileged ones, which included a countess
+and two baronets’ wives. ‘But it is just like her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There was no affectation in the matter, I can assure you,’
+said Edgar indignantly; ‘she looked as white as death.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then she should have danced less. I detest any exhibition
+of that kind. I am very glad my brother was not here to
+see it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think Sir Vernon has had so much reason to be proud of
+his daughter this evening that he would readily have forgiven
+her iniquity in fainting,’ retorted Edgar, his blood at boiling-point
+from honest indignation.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, wrapped in a long white cashmere cloak lined with
+white fur, looked very pale and ghostlike as she went slowly
+through the rooms on Edgar’s arm, attacked on her way by the
+reproaches of the partners with whom she was breaking faith by
+this untimely departure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she said, with a faint touch of her
+natural gaiety, ‘but I’ll pay my debts this time two years. The
+engagements can stand over.’</p>
+
+<p>When the bi-annual Hunt Ball comes round at Stratford-on-Avon
+there are some, perhaps, who will remember her promise,
+and the pale, pathetic face, and white-robed figure.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later the three ladies were seated in their
+carriage, Mrs. Ferrers still grumbling, while Edgar lingered at
+the door adjusting Daphne’s wraps.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he was going to shut the door, having no excuse for
+further delay, Daphne took his hand and clasped it with friendly
+warmth.</p>
+
+<p>‘How good you are!’ she said softly, looking up at him
+with eyes that to his mind seemed lovelier than all the lights of
+the firmament, infinitely glorious on this frosty night in the
+steel-blue sky. ‘How good you are! how staunch and true!’</p>
+
+<p>It was only well-merited praise, but it moved him so deeply<span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</span>
+that he had no power to answer, even by the smallest word.
+He could only grasp the slender little hand fervently in his
+own, and then shut the carriage-door with a bang, as if to
+drown the tumult of his own heart.</p>
+
+<p>‘Home, coachman,’ he called, in a choking voice; an entirely
+superfluous mandate, neither coachman, nor footman, nor horses,
+having the least idea of going anywhere else.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘FOR WELE OR WO, FOR CAROLE, OR FOR DAUNCE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Edgar</span> went back to the ball-room with his heart so penetrated
+with bliss, that the whole scene had an unreal look to
+him in its brightness and gaiety, as if in the next instant
+dancers, and lights, and music, and familiar faces might vanish
+altogether, and leave him suspended in empty space, alone with
+his own deep delight. He was as near Berkeley’s idea of the
+universe as a man so solid and substantial in his habits could be.
+Thought and feeling to-night made up his world; all the rest
+might be nothing but a spectral emanation from his own brain.
+He lived, he thought, he felt; and his heart and brain were filled
+with one idea, and that was Daphne. The ball-room without
+Daphne, albeit the Caledonians were just being danced with
+considerable spirit, was all falsehood and hollowness. He saw
+the spurious complexions, the scanty draperies, all the artificial
+graces and meretricious charms, as he had not seen them while
+she was there. That little leaven had leavened the whole lump.
+His eye, gladdened by her presence, had seen all things fair.
+But although he was inclined to look contemptuously upon the
+crowd in which she was not, the gladness of his heart made him
+good-naturedly disposed to all creation. He would have liked
+to leave that gay and festive scene immediately; but finding his
+mother enjoying herself very much in a snug corner with three
+other matrons, all in after-supper spirits, he consented to wait
+till Mrs. Turchill had seen one or two more dances.</p>
+
+<p>‘I like to watch them, Edgar,’ she said, ‘though I feel very
+thankful to Providence that we didn’t dance in the same style,
+or wear such tight dresses, in my time. I remember reading
+that they wore scanty skirts and hardly any bodices in the
+period of the French Revolution, and that some of their fashionable
+women even went so far as to appear with bare feet, which
+is almost too revolting to mention. All I can say is, that I hope
+the dresses I see to-night are not the signs of an approaching
+revolution in England; but I should hardly be surprised if they
+were. Do go and get a nice partner and let me see you waltz,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</span>
+Edgar. You’ve improved wonderfully since the Infirmary Ball
+last year.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m glad you think so, mother, but I shan’t dance any more
+to-night. I made no engagements for after supper, except with
+Daphne, and she has gone home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, the South Hill people have gone, have they? Well, if
+you’re not going to dance any more perhaps we may as well be
+going too,’ said Mrs. Turchill, perceiving that a good many of
+the county people were slipping quietly away, and not wishing
+to be left with the masses.</p>
+
+<p>So Edgar, very glad to escape, gave his mother his arm and
+assisted her to the cloak-room, where she completely extinguished
+herself in a valuable though somewhat old-fashioned set of
+sables, which covered her from head to foot, and made her look
+like a walking haystack.</p>
+
+<p>How full of happy fancies the young man’s mind was as
+they drove through the lanes and cross-country roads to Hawksyard
+under that brilliant sky, so peopled with worlds of light—‘gods,
+or the abodes of gods;’ he cared to-night no more than
+Sardanapalus what those stars might be—with now a view of
+distant hills, far away towards the famous Wrekin, a cloudlike
+spot in the extreme distance, and now vivid gleams of the nearer
+river, glittering under those glittering stars.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t it a delicious night, mother?’ he cried, and only a
+gentle snore—a snore expressive of the blissfulness of repose
+after exertion—breathed from the matronly mass of furred
+cloak and hood.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite alone—glad to be alone—alone with his new
+sense of happiness, and the starry night, and the image of his
+dear love.</p>
+
+<p>She had spoken him fair; she meant to make him happier
+than man ever was upon earth, since the earth could have
+produced but one Daphne. She must have meant something
+by those delicious words, that sweet spontaneous praise. Unsolicited
+she had taken his hand and pressed it with affectionate
+warmth—she who had been so cold to him—she who had never
+evinced one touch of tender feeling before; only a frank, sisterly
+kindness, which was more galling than cruelty. And to-night
+she had lifted up her eyes and looked at him—eyes so mournfully
+sweet, so exquisitely beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>‘My angel, that marble heart is melted at last,’ he said to
+himself. ‘Who would not be constant, for such a reward?’</p>
+
+<p>He had only been in love with Daphne a little over six
+months, yet it seemed to him now that in that half year lay the
+drama of his life. All that went before had been only prologue.
+True that he had fancied himself in love with Madoline—the
+lovely and gracious lady of his youthful dreams—but this was
+but the false light that comes before the dawn. He felt some<span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</span>
+touch of shame at having been so deceived as to his own feelings.
+He remembered that afternoon in the meadows between South
+Hill and Arden Rectory, when he had poured his woes into
+Daphne’s sympathising ears; when she, his idol of to-night, his
+idol for evermore, had seemed to him only a pretty school-girl
+in a muslin frock. Was she the same Daphne? Was he the
+same Edgar? She who now was a goddess in his sight. He who
+wondered that he could ever have cared for any other woman.
+The disciple of Condillac, when he sits himself down seriously
+to think out the question whether the rose which he touches and
+smells is really an independent existence, or only exists in relation
+to his own senses, was never in a more bewildered condition
+than honest Edgar Turchill when he remembered how devotedly,
+despairingly, undyingly, he had once loved—or fancied that he
+loved—Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Romeo was the same,’ he told himself sheepishly, having
+taken to reading Shakespeare of late, to curry favour with that
+fervid little Shakespearian, Daphne; ‘madly in love with Rosaline
+at noon—over head and ears in love with Juliet before
+midnight. And critics say that Shakespeare knew the human
+heart.’</p>
+
+<p>Sleep that night was impossible for the master of Hawksyard.
+Happily there was but a brief remnant of the night left in which
+he need lie tossing on his sleepless couch, staring at the brown
+oak panels, where the reflection of the night-lamp glimmered
+like a dim starbeam in a turbid pool. Cold wintry dawn came
+creeping over the hills, and at the first streak of daylight he was
+up and in his icy bath, and then on with his riding-clothes and
+away to the stable, where only one sleepy underling was moving
+slowly about with a lantern, calling drowsily to the horses to
+stand up and come out of a warm stable, in order to be tied to a
+wall and have pails of water thrown at them in a cold yard.</p>
+
+<p>To saddle Black Pearl with his own hands was but five
+minutes’ work, and in less than five more he was clattering under
+the archway and off to the nearest bit of open country, to take it
+out of the mare, who had not done any work for a week, and
+was in a humour to take a good deal out of her rider. Edgar
+this morning felt as if he could conquer the wildest horse that
+ever was foaled—nay, the Prince of Darkness himself, had he
+been called upon to wrestle with him under an equine guise.</p>
+
+<p>A hard gallop over a broad expanse of flat common, where
+the winter rime lay silver-white above the russet sward, quieted
+horse and rider; and, after a long round by lane and wood,
+Edgar rode quietly back to Hawksyard between ten and eleven,
+just in time to find his mother seated at breakfast, and wondering
+at her own dissipation.</p>
+
+<p>After this unusually late breakfast Mr. Turchill went to look
+at his horses—a regular thing on a non-hunting morning. ‘I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</span>
+took it out of the mare,’ he said, as Black Pearl stood reeking in
+her box, waiting to cool down before she was groomed.</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed you have, sir,’ answered his head man—a faithful
+creature, but not ceremonious with a master he adored. ‘You
+don’t mean hunting her to-morrow, I suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, yes, I did, if the weather allows. Don’t you think
+she’ll be fit?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think you’ve pretty well whacked her out for the next
+week to come. She won’t touch her corn.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor old woman!’ said Edgar, going into the box and fondling
+the beautiful black head. ‘Did we go too fast, my girl?
+It was as much your fault as mine, my beauty. I think we were
+both bewitched; but I must take the nonsense out of you somehow,
+before you carry a lady.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You didn’t think of putting a lady on that mare, did you,
+sir?’ asked the groom.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I do. I think she’d carry a lady beautifully.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So she would, sir; but she wouldn’t carry the same lady
+twice. There’d be very little left of the lady when she’d done.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Think so, Jarvey? Then we must find something better
+for the lady—something as safe as a house, and as handsome as—as
+paint,’ concluded Edgar, whose mind was not richly stocked
+with poetical similes. ‘If you hear of anything very perfect in
+the market you can let me know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, sir.’</p>
+
+<p>It seemed early in the day to think of buying a horse for a
+wife who was yet to be won; but, encouraged by those few
+words of Daphne’s, Edgar saw all the future in so rosy a light
+that, this morning, freshened and exhilarated by his long ride,
+he felt as secure of happiness as if the wedding-bells were ringing
+their gay joy-peal over the flat green fields and winding
+waters. He was longing to see Daphne again, to win from her
+some confirmation of his hope; and now as he moved about the
+poultry-yard and gardens he was counting the minutes which
+must pass before he could with decency present himself at South
+Hill.</p>
+
+<p>It would not do for him to go there before luncheon. Everybody
+would be tired. Afternoon tea-time would perhaps be the
+more agreeable hour. It was a period of the day in which
+women always seemed to him more friendly and amiable than at
+any other time—content to lay aside the most enthralling book,
+or the newest passion in fancy-work, and to abandon themselves
+graciously to the milder pleasures of society.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon was so fine that he went on foot to pay his
+visit, glad to get rid of the time between luncheon and five
+o’clock in a leisurely six-mile walk. It was a delicious walk by
+meadow, and copse, and river-side, and although Edgar knew
+every inch of the way, he loved nature in all her moods so well<span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</span>
+that the varying beauties of a frosty winter afternoon were as
+welcome to his eye and spirit as the lush loveliness of midsummer;
+and he was thinking of Daphne all the way, picturing her
+smile of greeting, feeling the thrilling touch of her hand, warm
+in his own.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline, or Sir Vernon, would ask him to dinner, no doubt;
+and then, some time during the evening, he would be able to
+get Daphne all to himself in the conservatory, on the stairs, in
+the corridor. His heart and mind were so full of purpose that
+he felt what he had to say could be said briefly. He would
+ask her if she had not repented her cruelty that night in the
+walnut walk; if she had not found out that true love, even from
+a somewhat inferior kind of person, was worth having—a jewel
+not to be flung under the feet of swine. And then, and then,
+she would lift up those sweet eyes to his face—as she had done
+last night—and he would clasp her unreproved in his arms, and
+know himself supremely blest. Life could hold no more delight.
+Death might come that moment and find him content to die.</p>
+
+<p>It was dusk when he came to South Hill, a frosty twilight,
+with a crimson glow of sunset low down in the gray sky, and
+happy robins chirruping in the plantations, where the purple
+rhododendrons flowered so luxuriantly in spring-time, and where
+scarlet berries of holly and mountain ash enlivened the dull dark
+greenery of winter. The house on the hill, with its many windows,
+some shining with firelight from within, others reflecting
+the ruddier light in the sky, made a pleasant picture after a six-mile
+tramp through a somewhat lonely landscape. It looked a
+hospitable house, a house full of happy people, a house where a
+man might find a temporary haven from the cares of life. To
+Edgar’s eyes the firelight shining from within was like a welcome.</p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Lawford at home?’ he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not at home,’ answered the footman with a decisive air.</p>
+
+<p>Now there is something much more crushing in the manner
+of a footman when he tells you that his people are out than in
+that of the homelier parlour-maid who gives the same information.
+The girl would fain reconcile you to the blow; she sympathises
+with you in your disappointment. Perhaps she offers
+you the somewhat futile consolation implied in the fact that her
+mistress has only just stepped out, or comforts you with the distant
+hope that your friend will be home to dinner. She would
+be glad if she could to lessen your regret. But the well-trained
+man-servant looks at you with the blank and stony gaze of a
+blind destiny. His voice is doom. ‘Not at home,’ he says
+curtly; and if, perchance, there be any expression in his face, it
+will be a veiled scorn, as who should say, ‘Not at home—to
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>But Edgar was in a mood not to be daunted by the most icy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</span>
+of menials—a Warwickshire bumpkin two years ago, but steeped
+to the lips in the languid insolence of May Fair to-day.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is Miss Daphne Lawford at home?’ he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The footman believed, with supreme indifference, as if the
+presence or absence of a younger daughter who was not an
+heiress were a question he could hardly stoop to contemplate, that
+Miss Daphne Lawford might possibly be found upon the premises;
+and he further condescended to impart the information
+that Miss Lawford had driven to the Abbey with Mrs. Ferrers
+and Mr. Goring to see the improvements.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll go and find her for myself,’ said Edgar, too eager to wait
+for forms and ceremonies; ‘I daresay she is in the morning-room.’</p>
+
+<p>He passed the servant, and went straight to the pretty room
+where he had been so much at home for the last ten years.
+There were no lamps or candles; Daphne was sitting alone in
+the firelight, in one of those low roomy chairs which modern
+upholsterers delight in—sitting alone, with neither book nor
+work, and Fluff, the Maltese terrier, curled up in her lap.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyelids were lowered, and Edgar approached her softly,
+thinking she was asleep; but at the sound of his footfall she
+looked up, gently, gravely, without any surprise at his coming.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope that you are better—quite well, in fact; that you
+have entirely recovered from your fatigue last night,’ he began
+tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am quite well,’ she answered almost angrily, and blushing
+crimson with vexation. ‘Pray don’t make a fuss about it.
+Waltzing so long made me giddy. That was all.’</p>
+
+<p>Her snappish tone was a cruel change after her sweetness
+last night. Edgar’s heart sank very low at this unexpected
+rebuff.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are all alone,’ he said feebly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Unless you count Fluff and the squirrel, yes. But they are
+very good company,’ answered Daphne, brightening a little, and
+smiling at him with that provoking kindness, that easy friendliness,
+which always chilled his soul.</p>
+
+<p>It was so hopelessly unlike the feeling he wished to awaken.</p>
+
+<p>‘Madoline drove to the Abbey with Aunt Rhoda and Mr.
+Goring directly after luncheon. The new hot-houses are finished,
+I believe, at last. I have been horribly lazy. I only came down
+an hour ago.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad you were able to sleep,’ said Edgar. ‘It was more
+than I could do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose nobody ever does sleep much after a ball,’ answered
+Daphne. ‘The music goes on repeating itself over and
+over again in one’s brain, and one goes spinning round in a perpetual
+imaginary waltz. I was thinking all last night of Don
+Ramiro and Donna Clara.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Friends of yours?’ inquired Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne’s eyes sparkled at the question, but she did not
+laugh. She only looked at him with a compassionate smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have never read Heine?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never. Is it interesting?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Heinrich Heine? He was a German poet, don’t you know.
+As great a poet, almost, as Byron.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Unhappily I don’t read German.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but some of his poetry has been translated. The translations
+are not much like the original, but still they are something.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And who is Don— Ra——what’s-his-name?’ inquired Edgar,
+still very much in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>‘The hero of a ballad—an awful, ghastly, ghostly ballad, ever
+so much ghastlier than Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene,
+and the worms they crept in, and the worms they crept out, don’t
+you know. He is dead, and she has jilted him, and married somebody
+else; and he has promised her on the eve of her wedding
+that he will come to the wedding feast: and he comes and waltzes
+with her, and she doesn’t know that he is dead, and she reproaches
+him for wearing a black cloak at her bridal, and she asks him why
+his cheeks are snow-white and his hands ice-cold, and they go on
+whirling round all the time, the trumpets blowing and the drums
+beating, and to all she says he gives the same answer:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Said I not that I would come?”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="no-indent">That awful ballad was in my mind all night, and when I did at
+last fall asleep, I dreamt I was at the ball again, and instead of
+Stratford Town Hall we were in an old Gothic palace at Toledo
+and—and—the person I was dancing with was Don Ramiro.
+His white dead face looked down at me, and all the people
+vanished, and we were dancing alone in the dark cold hall.’</p>
+
+<p>She shuddered at the recollection of her dream, clasping her
+hands before her face, as if to shut out some hideous sight.</p>
+
+<p>‘You ought not to read such poetry,’ said Edgar, deeply concerned.
+‘How can people let you have such books?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, there is no harm in the book. You know I adore poetry.
+Directly I was able to write a German exercise, I got hold of
+Heine, and began to spell out his verses. They are so sweet, so
+mournful, so full of a patient despair.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have too much imagination,’ said Edgar. ‘You ought
+to read sober solid prose.’</p>
+
+<p>‘“Blair’s Lectures,” “Sturm’s Reflections,” “Locke on the
+Understanding,”’ retorted Daphne, laughing. ‘No; I like books
+that take me out of myself and into another world.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But if they only take you into charnel-houses, among ghosts
+and dead people, I don’t see the advantage of that.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you? There are times when anything is better than
+one’s own thoughts.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should you shrink from thought?’ asked Edgar tenderly.
+‘You can have nothing painful to remember or think about;
+unless,’ he added, seeing an opening, ‘you feel remorseful for
+having been so cruel to me.’</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn his chair close to hers in the firelight—the
+ruddy, comfortable light which folded them round like a rosy
+cloud. She sat far back in her downy nest, almost buried in its
+soft depths, her eyes gazing dreamily at the fire, her sunny hair
+glittering in the fitful light. If she had been looking him full
+in the face, in broad day, Edgar Turchill could hardly have been
+so bold.</p>
+
+<p>‘I did feel very sorry, last night, when you were so good to
+me,’ she said slowly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Good to you! Why, I did nothing!’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are so loyal and good. I saw it all last night, as if your
+heart had suddenly been spread open before me like a book. I
+think I read you plainly last night for the first time. You are
+faithful and true; a gentleman to the core of your heart. All
+men ought to be like that: but they are not.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You can have had very little experience of their shortcomings,’
+said Edgar, his heart glowing at her praise. And then,
+emboldened, and yet full of fear, he hastened to take advantage
+of her humour. ‘If you can trust me; if you think me in the
+slightest measure worthy of these sweet words, which might be
+a much better man’s crown of bliss, why will you not make me
+completely happy? I love you so truly, so dearly, that, if to
+have an honest man for your slave can help to make your life
+pleasant, you had better take me. I know that I am not worthy
+of you, that you are as high above me in intellect, and grace,
+and beauty, as the stars are in their mystery and splendour;
+but a more brilliant man might not be quite so ready to mould
+himself according to your will, to sink his own identity in yours,
+to be your very slave, in fact; to have no purpose except to
+obey you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t!’ cried Daphne. ‘If you were my husband, I should
+like you to make me obey. I am not such a fool as to want a
+slave.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me be your husband; we can settle afterwards who
+shall obey,’ pleaded Edgar, leaning with folded arms upon the
+broad elbow of her chair, trying to get as near her as her
+entrenched position would allow.</p>
+
+<p>‘I like you very much. After Madoline there is no one I
+like better,’ faltered Daphne; ‘but I am not the least little
+bit in love with you. I suppose it is wrong to be so candid;
+but I want you to know the truth.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you like me well enough to marry me, I am content.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Really and truly? Content to accept liking instead of love;
+confidence and frank straightforward friendship instead of sentiment
+or romance?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I do not care a straw for romance. And to be liked and
+trusted——well, that is something. So long as there is no one
+else you have ever liked better——’</p>
+
+<p>The face turned towards the fire quivered with the passing
+of a strong emotion, but Edgar could only see the thick ripple a
+of golden hair making a wavy line above the delicate ear, and
+the perfect outline of the throat, rising out of its soft lace ruffle
+like the stem of a lily from among its leaves.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who else is there for me to like?’ she asked with a faint
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then, dearest, I would rather have your liking than any
+other woman’s love: and it shall go hard with me if liking do
+not grow to love before our lives are ended,’ said Edgar, clasping
+the hand that lay inert upon Fluff’s silky back.</p>
+
+<p>The Maltese resented the liberty by an ineffectual snap.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please, don’t—don’t think it quite settled yet,’ cried Daphne,
+scared by this hand-clasp, which seemed like taking possession
+of her. ‘You must give me time to breathe—time to think. I
+want to be worthy of you, if I can—if—if—I am ever to be your
+wife. I want to be loyal—and honest—as you are.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only say that you will be my wife. I can trust you with
+the rest of my fate.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Give me a few days—a few hours, at least—to consider.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But why not to-day? Let it be to-day,’ he pleaded passionately.</p>
+
+<p>‘You must give me a little while,’ answered Daphne, smiling
+faintly at his impatience, which seemed to her something childish,
+she not being touched by the same passion, or inspired by
+the same hope, being, as it were, outside the circle of his
+thoughts. ‘If—if—you are very anxious to be answered—let
+it be to-day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Bless you, darling!’</p>
+
+<p>‘But don’t be grateful in advance. The answer may be No.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It must not. You would not break my heart a second
+time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, then you contrived to mend it after the first breakage,’
+retorted Daphne, laughing with something of her old mirth.
+‘Madoline broke it first, and you patched it together and made
+quite a good job of it, and then offered it to me. Well, if you
+really wish it, you shall have your answer to-night. I must
+speak to Lina first.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know she will be on my side.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Tremendously. You will dine here, of course. And I suppose
+you will go away at about eleven o’clock. You know the
+window of my room?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Know it!’ cried Edgar, who had lingered to gaze at that
+particular casement under every condition of sky and temperature.
+‘Know it? Did Romeo know Juliet’s balcony?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, then, at ten minutes past eleven look up at my
+window. If the answer be No, the shutters will be shut, and all
+dark; if the answer be Yes, the lamp shall be in the window.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, blessed light. I know the lamp will be there.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And now no more of this nonsense,’ said Daphne imperatively.
+‘I am going to give you some tea.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Put a dose of poison in it, and finish me off straight, if the
+lamp is not going to shine in your window.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Absurd man! Do you suppose I know any more than you
+what the answer is to be? We are the sport of Fate.’</p>
+
+<p>The door was opened gently, as if it had been the entrance
+to a sick man’s chamber, and the well-drilled footman brought
+in a little folding table, and then a tea-tray, an intensely new-fashioned
+old-fashioned oval oaken tray, with a silver railing,
+and oriental cups and saucers <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">à la Belinda</i>—everything strictly
+of the hoop-and-patch period. These frivolities of tray and tea-things
+were one of Mr. Goring’s latest gifts to his mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Not another tender word would Daphne allow from her
+lover. She talked of the people at the ball, asked for details
+about everybody—the girl in the pink frock; the matron with
+hardly any frock at all; the hunting men and squires of high
+degree. She kept Edgar so fully employed answering her questions
+that he had no time to edge in an amorous speech, though
+his whole being was breathing love.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline and Gerald Goring came in and found them <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tête-à-tête</i>
+by the fire. They had made a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">détour</i> on their way home,
+and had deposited Mrs. Ferrers at the Rectory. It was the first
+time Gerald had seen Daphne since the ball.</p>
+
+<p>‘Better?’ he inquired, with a friendly nod.</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite well, thanks. I have not been ill,’ she answered
+curtly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goring seated himself in a shadowy corner, remote from
+the little group by the tea-table.</p>
+
+<p>‘Shall I ring for more tea, or have you had some at the
+Abbey?’ asked Daphne, with a businesslike air.</p>
+
+<p>‘We had tea in Lady Geraldine’s room,’ answered Madoline.
+‘I wish you had been with us, Daphne. It is such a lovely
+room in the firelight. The houses are all finished, and Cormack
+has filled three of them already. Such lovely flowers! I can’t
+imagine where he has found them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Easy to do that kind of thing when one has a floating
+balance of fifty thousand or so at one’s bankers,’ answered Edgar
+cheerily. ‘My wife will have to put up with a few old orange-trees
+that have been at Hawksyard for a century.’</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which he uttered those two words ‘my wife,’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</span>
+startled Gerald out of his reverie. There was a world of suppressed
+delight and triumph in the utterance.</p>
+
+<p>‘He has been asking her to marry him, and she has relented,
+and accepted him,’ he thought, hardly knowing whether to be
+glad or angry.</p>
+
+<p>Was it not ever so much better that she should reward this
+faithful fellow’s devotion, and marry, and be happy in the
+beaten track of life? He had told himself once that she was
+a creature just a little too bright and lovely for treading beaten
+tracks, a girl who ought to be the heroine of some romantic history.
+Yet, are these heroines of romance the happiest among
+women? Was the young woman who was sewn up in a sack
+and drowned in the Bosphorus happy, though her fate inspired
+one of the finest poems that ever was written? Was Sappho
+particularly blest, or Hero, Heloise, or Juliet? Their fame was
+the fruit of exceptional disaster, and not of exceptional joy.
+The Greek was wise who said that the happiest she is the woman
+who has no history.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon Lawford came in while they were all talking of
+hot-houses, and asked for a cup of tea, an unusual condescension
+on his part, and which fluttered Daphne a little as she rang
+the bell for a fresh teapot.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t trouble yourself, my dear. Give me anything you
+have there,’ he said, more kindly than he was wont to speak.
+‘So you were too tired to show at luncheon. Your aunt says
+you danced too much.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was her first ball,’ pleaded Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; the first, but not likely to be the last. She is launched
+now, and will have plenty of invitations. A foolish friend of
+mine told me that Daphne was the belle of the ball.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She was,’ said Edgar sturdily. ‘I saw two old women
+standing on a rout-seat to look at her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is that conclusive?’ asked Sir Vernon good-humouredly,
+and with a shrewd glance from Edgar to his fair-haired daughter.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think people must have been demented if they wasted
+a look upon me while Lina was in the room,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, but every one knows Lina,’ answered her father,
+pleased at this homage to his beloved elder daughter. ‘You
+are a novelty.’</p>
+
+<p>He was proud of her success, in spite of himself; proud
+that she should have burst upon his Warwickshire friends like
+a revelation of hitherto unknown beauty—unknown, at least,
+since his second wife, in all the witchery of her charms, had
+turned the heads of the county twenty years ago. That beauty
+had been a fatal dower—fatal to her, fatal to him—and he had
+often told himself that Daphne’s prettiness was a perilous thing;
+to be looked at with the eye of fear and suspicion rather than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</span>
+that of love. And yet he was pleased at her triumph, and
+inclined to be kinder to her on account thereof.</p>
+
+<p>They seemed a happy family-party at dinner that day.
+Madoline was full of delight in the improvement of her future
+home—full of gratitude to her betrothed for the largeness with
+which he had anticipated her wishes. Edgar was in high spirits;
+Daphne all gaiety; Sir Vernon unusually open in speech and
+manner. If Gerald was more silent than the others, nobody
+noticed his reserve. He had been quiet all day, and when
+Madoline had questioned him as to the cause, had owned to not
+being particularly well.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the evening they all adjourned to the billiard-room,
+with the exception of Daphne, who pleaded a headache, and bade
+every one good-night; but about an hour afterwards, upon the
+stroke of eleven, Madoline, who had just gone up to her room,
+was startled by a knock at her door, and then by the apparition
+of Daphne in her long white dressing-gown.</p>
+
+<p>‘My pet, I thought you went to bed an hour ago.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, dear. I had a headache, but I was not sleepy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My poor darling; you are so pale and heavy-eyed. Come
+to the fire.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline wanted to instal her in one of the cosy armchairs
+by the hearth, but Daphne slipped to her favourite seat on the
+fleecy white rug at her sister’s feet.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, dear; like this,’ she said, looking up at Madoline with
+tearful eyes; ‘at your feet—always at your feet; so much lower
+than you in all things—so little worthy of your love.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, it offends me to hear you talk like that. You are
+all that is sweet and dear. You and I are equal in all things,
+except fortune: and it shall not be my fault if we are not made
+equal in that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Fortune!’ echoed Daphne drearily. ‘Oh, if you but knew
+how little I value that. It is your goodness I revere—your
+purity, your—’</p>
+
+<p>She burst into tears, and sobbed passionately, with her face
+hidden on her sister’s knee.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, what has happened—what has grieved you so?
+Tell me, darling; trust me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is nothing; mere foolishness of mine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have something to tell me, I know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ answered Daphne, drying her tears hastily and looking
+up with a grave set face. ‘I have come to ask your advice. I
+mean to abide by your decision, whichever way it may fall.
+Edgar wants me to marry him, and I have promised him an
+answer to-night. Shall it be “Yes” or “No?”’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, of course, my pet, if you love him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But I don’t; not the least atom. I have told him so in the
+very plainest straightest words I could find. But he still wishes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</span>
+me to be Mrs. Turchill; and he seems to think that when I have
+been married to him twenty years or so I shall get really attached
+to him—as Mrs. John Anderson, my Jo, did, don’t you know?
+She may have cared very little for Mr. Anderson at the outset.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, Daphne,’ sighed Madoline, with a distressed look, ‘this
+is very puzzling. I don’t know what to say. I like Edgar so
+much—I value him so highly—and I should dearly like you to
+marry him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You would!’ cried Daphne decisively. ‘Then that settles
+it. I shall marry him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But you don’t care for him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I care for you. I would do anything in this world—yes,’
+with sudden energy, ‘the most difficult thing, were it at the cost
+of my life—to make you happy. Would it make you happy for
+me to marry Edgar?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe it would.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I’ll do it. Hark! there’s the outer door shutting,’
+cried Daphne, as the hall-door closed with a hollow reverberation.
+‘Edgar will be under my window in a minute or two.
+I’ll run and give him my answer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What do you mean?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A lamp in my window is to signify Yes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go and put the lamp there, darling. May it be a star for
+you both, shining upon the beginning of a bright happy life!’</p>
+
+<p>A few minutes later Edgar, standing in the shrubbery walk,
+with his eyes fixed on Daphne’s casement, the owner of them
+unconscious of winter’s cold, saw the bright spot of light stream
+out upon the darkness, and knew that he was to be blest. He
+went home like a man in a happy dream, scarce knowing by
+what paths he went; and it is a mercy he did not walk into
+the Avon and incontinently drown himself.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘FOR I WOL GLADLY YELDEN HIRE MY PLACE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Edgar Turchill</span> rode over to South Hill directly after
+breakfast next morning. It was a hunting-day, and the meet
+was at a favourite spot; but he had business to do which could
+brook no delay, and even the delight of skimming across the
+Vale of the Red Horse, on a hunter well able to carry him, must
+give way to the more vital matter which called him to the house
+on the hill. So soon as Sir Vernon Lawford might be fairly
+supposed to be accessible to a visitor, Mr. Turchill presented
+himself, and asked for an interview.</p>
+
+<p>He was ushered straight to Sir Vernon’s study, that sacred,
+and in a manner official chamber, which he had ever held in awe;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</span>
+a room in which the driest possible books, in the richest possible
+bindings, repelled the inquiring mind of an ordinary student,
+who, looking for Waverley, found himself confronted with Blackstone,
+or exploring for Byron, found himself face to face with
+Coke or Chitty.</p>
+
+<p>Here, Sir Vernon, seated reposefully in his great red morocco
+armchair, listened courteously to Edgar’s relation of his love,
+and his hope that, subject to parental approval, his constancy
+might speedily be rewarded. ‘I have heard something of this
+before,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘My sister told me you had proposed
+to Daphne, and had been rejected. I was sorry the child had
+not better taste; for I like you very much, Turchill, as I believe
+you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have been very good to me,’ answered Edgar, reddening
+with the honest warmth of his feelings. ‘South Hill has
+been my second home. The happiest hours of my life have
+been spent here. Yes, Sir Vernon, Daphne certainly did refuse
+me in the summer; but I felt that it was my own fault. I spoke
+too soon. I ought to have bided my time. And last night, after
+the ball, I spoke again, and—’</p>
+
+<p>‘With a happier result,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘But Daphne is
+little more than a child—no wiser than a child in her whims
+and fancies. I should not like a straightforward fellow like
+you to suffer from a school-girl’s frivolity. Do you think she
+knows her own mind now any better than she did in the summer,
+when she gave you quite a different answer? Are you
+sure that she is in earnest—that she is as fond of you as you are
+of her?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have no hope of that,’ answered Edgar, a little despondently.
+‘I have been loving her ever since she came home, and
+my love has grown stronger with every day of my life. If she
+likes me well enough to marry me, I am content.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon remained silent for some moments, gravely contemplating
+the fire, as if he were reading somebody’s history in
+it, and that a gloomy one.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am fond enough of you to be sorry you should marry on
+such conditions,’ he answered, after a longish pause. ‘My
+younger daughter is a very pretty girl—people persecuted me
+with compliments about her the other night—and, I suppose, a
+very fascinating girl; but if she does not honestly and sincerely
+return your love, I say, Do not marry her. Pluck her out of
+your heart, Edgar, as you would a poisonous weed. Be sure, if
+you don’t, the poison will rankle there by-and-by, and develop
+its venom at the time you are least prepared for it.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, secure in his assurance of future happiness—for what
+man, having won Daphne, could fail to be happy?—smiled at
+the unwonted energy of Sir Vernon’s address.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear sir, you take this matter too seriously,’ he replied.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</span>
+‘I have no fear of the issue. Daphne’s heart is free, and it will
+be very hard if I cannot make myself owner of it, loving her
+as I do, and having her promise to marry me. I only want to
+be assured of your approval.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That you have with all heartiness, my dear boy. But I
+should like to be sure that Daphne is worthy of you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Worthy of me!’ echoed Edgar, with a tender smile; ‘I
+wish to Heaven I were worthy of her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She is very young,’ said Sir Vernon thoughtfully.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nineteen on her next birthday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But that birthday is nearly a year off. I hope you will not
+be in a hurry to be married.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall defer that to your judgment; though I think, as I
+can never feel warmly interested in Hawksyard till I have a
+wife there, the sooner we are married, so far as my happiness is
+concerned, the better.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course. You young men have always some all-sufficient
+reason for being over the border with the lady. How will your
+mother relish the change?’</p>
+
+<p>Poor Edgar winced at the question, feeling very sure that
+Mrs. Turchill would take the event as her death-blow.</p>
+
+<p>‘My mother is perfectly independent,’ he faltered. ‘She has
+her jointure.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Has she not Hawksyard for her life?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; the estate was strictly entailed. I am sole master
+there.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad of that,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘It is an interesting
+old place.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne likes it,’ murmured Edgar fatuously.</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose you know that I can give my younger daughter
+no fortune?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you could give her a million, it would not make me one
+whit better pleased at winning her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe you, Edgar,’ answered Sir Vernon. ‘When a
+man of your mould is in love, filthy lucre has very little weight
+with him. There will be a residue, I have no doubt, when I
+am gone—a few thousands; but the bulk of my property was
+settled when I married Lina’s mother. I suppose you know
+that Lina is very pleased at the idea of having you for a brother-in-law?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know nothing, except that Daphne has consented to be
+my wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina announced the fact to me this morning at breakfast.
+Daphne was not down—a headache—a little natural shyness, I
+daresay. Lina is very glad—very much your friend.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She has always been that,’ faltered Edgar, looking back
+with half-incredulous wonder to the time when a word from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</span>
+Lina had been enough to stir the pulses of his heart, when the
+mention of her name was music.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I cannot do better for you than leave your happiness
+in Lina’s care,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘Daphne will not be
+married first, of course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Might they not be married on the same day?’ suggested
+Edgar. ‘Lina is to be married directly she comes of age, is she
+not?’</p>
+
+<p>‘That has been proposed,’ said Sir Vernon reluctantly, ‘but
+I am in no hurry to lose my daughter, and I don’t think Lina
+is eager to leave me. In my precarious state of health it will be
+hard for me to bear the pain of parting.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But, my dear Sir Vernon, she will be so near you—quite
+close at hand,’ remonstrated Edgar, inwardly revolting against
+this selfishness, which would delay his own happiness as well as
+Goring’s.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t talk about it, Turchill,’ exclaimed Sir Vernon testily.
+‘You don’t understand—you can’t enter into my feelings. My
+daughter is all the world to me now. What will she be when
+she is a wife, a mother, with a hundred different interests and
+anxieties plucking at her heart-strings? Why, I daresay a
+teething-baby would be more to her than her father, if I were
+on my death-bed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed, Sir Vernon, you wrong her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I daresay I do. But I am devoured with jealousy when I
+think of her belonging to anyone else. It is the penalty she
+pays for having been perfect as a daughter. Our virtues, as
+well as our vices, are often scourges for our own backs. However,
+when the time comes I must bear the blow with a smiling
+countenance, that she may never know how hard I am hit.
+Only you can imagine I don’t want to hasten the evil hour.
+And now, as I think we understand each other, you may be off
+to pleasanter society than mine.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar instantly availed himself of this permission, and hastened
+to the morning-room, where Madoline was seated at her
+work-table, while Daphne twisted herself round and round on
+the music-stool, now talking to her sister, now playing a few
+bars of one of Schumann’s ‘<em>Kinderstücken</em>,’ anon picking out a
+popular melody she had heard the faithful Bink whistle as he
+weeded his flower-beds.</p>
+
+<p>She started a little at Edgar’s entrance, and ‘blushed celestial
+red, love’s proper hue,’ much to the delight of her lover, who
+hung out a rosy flag on his own side, and looked as shy as any
+school-girl.</p>
+
+<p>He shook hands with Madoline, and then went straight to
+the piano, and tried by a tender pressure of Daphne’s hand to
+express something of the rapture that was flooding his soul.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have seen your father, dearest,’ he said in her ear, as she<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</span>
+went on lightly playing little bits of Schumann. ‘He thoroughly
+approves—he is glad.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I am glad if he is glad, and you are glad, and Madoline
+is glad,’ answered Daphne, with a smile in which there was
+a subtle mockery that escaped Edgar’s perception. ‘What can
+I do better than please everybody?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have made me the happiest man in creation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Does not every young man say that when he is engaged?’
+asked Daphne laughingly. ‘I believe it is a formula. And
+when he has been married a year the happiest man in creation
+takes to quarrelling with his wife. However, I hope we may
+not quarrel. I will try to be as good to you as you have been
+to me; and that is saying a good deal.’</p>
+
+<p>They lingered by the piano, Edgar pouring forth vague
+expressions of his delight, his gratitude, his intoxication of bliss.
+Daphne playing a little, and listening a little, with her eyes
+always on the keys, offering her lover only the lashes, dark
+brown with sparks of gold upon their tips, for his contemplation.
+But such lashes, and such eyelids, and such a lovely droop of
+the small classic head, were enough to satisfy a lover’s eye for
+longer than Edgar was required to look at them.</p>
+
+<p>By-and-by, when he had exhausted a lover’s capacity for
+talking nonsense, he made a sudden dash at the practical.</p>
+
+<p>‘I want you to come and see my mother, Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you told her?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, not yet. There has been no opportunity, you know.’</p>
+
+<p>This was hardly true, since, seated opposite Mrs. Turchill
+at the breakfast-table that morning, Edgar had vainly endeavoured
+to frame the sentence which should announce his bliss,
+and had found an awkwardness in the revelation which required
+to be surmounted at more leisure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am going to tell her directly I go home. It was better
+to see Sir Vernon first, don’t you know. And I want you and
+Madoline to come over to tea this afternoon. You could drive
+over to Hawksyard with Daphne after luncheon, couldn’t you,
+Madoline?’ he asked, going over to the work-table. ‘It would
+be so good of you, and would please my mother so very much.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Would it?’ asked Lina, smiling up at him. ‘Then it shall
+be done.’</p>
+
+<p>The young man lingered as long as he could, consistently
+with his performance of that duty which he felt must not be
+deferred beyond luncheon time. It was hardly a good time to
+choose for the revelation, for Mrs. Turchill was apt to be somewhat
+disturbed in her temper at the mid-day meal; her patience
+having been exercised by sundry defalcations discovered in her
+morning round of the house. It might be that new milk had
+been given away to unauthorised recipients, or to pensioners
+who were only entitled to receive skimmed milk; it might be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</span>
+an unexplainable evanishment of home-brewed beer: or that
+the principal oak staircase was not so slippery as it ought to be;
+or that the famous pewter dinner-service was tarnished; or a
+favourite fender displayed spots of rust; but there was generally
+something, some feather-weight of domestic care which disturbed
+the even balance of Mrs. Turchill’s mind at this hour.
+Like those modern scales which can be turned by an infinitesimal
+portion of a human hair, so the fine balance of Mrs.
+Turchill’s temper required but very little to alter it.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar rode home to Hawksyard in the clear bright winter
+noontide, feeling as much like a convicted criminal as a young
+man of pure mind and clear conscience well could feel. He
+went bustling into the dining-room, rubbing his hands, and
+making a great pretence of cheeriness. His mother was standing
+on the hearth-rug knitting a useful brown winter sock—for
+him, he knew. Those active knitting-needles of hers were
+always at work for him. He felt himself an ingrate, as he
+thought of her labour.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, mother; lovely weather, isn’t it, so wintry and seasonable?
+I hope you have had a pleasant morning.’</p>
+
+<p>‘About as pleasant as I can have in a nest of vipers,’ answered
+Mrs. Turchill, frowning at her work, and intent upon
+turning a heel.</p>
+
+<p>‘What’s up now?’ asked Edgar, nothing startled by the
+vigour of her speech.</p>
+
+<p>‘The beer consumed at Christmas—I won’t say drunk, for
+gallons of it must have been given away—is something too
+dreadful to contemplate,’ replied Mrs. Turchill.</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind the beer, mother,’ answered Edgar, still rubbing
+his hands before the fire, and shifting from one foot to
+another in a manner that indicated a certain perturbation of
+spirit; ‘Christmas comes only once a year, you know, and the
+servants ought to enjoy themselves.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s all very well, Edgar, within proper limits; but
+when I see them stepping over the boundary line——’</p>
+
+<p>‘You feel that it’s time to put on the drag,’ interjected
+Edgar. ‘Of course; very right and proper. Whatever should
+I do without such a dear prudent mother to look after things?’</p>
+
+<p>And then, suddenly remembering that the most eager desire
+of his heart at this very moment was to substitute a foolish
+young wife for this wise and experienced housekeeper, Edgar
+Turchill became suddenly as vermilion as the most vivid cock’s-comb
+in his mother’s poultry-yard. He felt that the revelation
+he had to make must be blurted out somehow. There was no
+use in prancing before the fire, making such a serious business
+of warming his hands.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ve been over to South Hill this morning, mother,’ he said
+at last, rather jerkily.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Have you?’ said Mrs. Turchill curtly. ‘It seems to me
+you never go anywhere else.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, I’m afraid that’s a true bill,’ he answered, laughing
+with affected heartiness, very much as the timorous traveller
+whistles in a lonely wood. ‘I love the place, and the people
+who live in it. South Hill has been my second home ever since
+I was a little bit of a chap at Rugby. But this morning I have
+been there on very particular business. I have been having a
+serious talk with Sir Vernon. I wonder if you could guess the
+subject of our conversation, mother, and spare my blushes in
+telling it?’</p>
+
+<p>It was Mrs. Turchill’s turn to assume the cock’s-comb’s
+flaming hue.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you have done anything to blush for, Edgar, I am sorry
+for you,’ she observed sternly. ‘Your father was one of the
+most respectable men in Warwickshire, and the most looked up
+to, or my father would not have allowed me to marry him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are taking me a trifle too literally, mother,’ answered
+Edgar, laughing uneasily. ‘I hope there is nothing disreputable
+in a man of my age falling in love and wanting to be married.
+That’s the only crime I have to confess this morning. Yesterday
+afternoon I asked Daphne to be my wife, and she consented;
+and this morning I settled it all with Sir Vernon. We are to
+be married on the same day as Goring and Madoline—at least,
+Sir Vernon said something to that effect.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed!’ exclaimed Mrs. Turchill freezingly. ‘Indeed!
+And now Miss Daphne has consented and Sir Vernon has consented,
+and the very wedding-day is fixed, you do me the honour
+to inform me. I thank you from my heart, Edgar, for the
+respect and affection, the consideration and regard, you have
+shown for me in this matter. I am not likely to forget your
+conduct.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest mother,’ gasped Edgar affrightedly, for the icy indignation
+of his parent’s speech and manner went beyond the
+worst he had feared, ‘surely you are not offended—surely——’</p>
+
+<p>‘But it is only what I might reasonably have expected,’ pursued
+Mrs. Turchill, ignoring the interruption. ‘It is only what
+I ought to have looked for. When a mother devotes herself
+day and night to her son; when she studies his welfare and his
+comfort in everything; when she sits up with him night after
+night with the measles—quite unnecessarily, as the doctor said
+at the time—and reduces herself to a shadow when he has the
+scarlatina; when she worries herself about him every time he
+gets damp feet, and endures agony every hour of the day while
+he is out shooting; this is pretty sore to be the result. He is
+caught by the first pretty face he sees, and his mother becomes
+a cipher in his estimation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Believe me that is not my case, dear mother,’ protested<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</span>
+Edgar, putting his arm round the matron’s waist, which she
+made as inflexible as she possibly could for the occasion, and
+trying to kiss her, which she would not allow. ‘You will never
+cease to be valued and dear. Do you suppose there is no room
+in my heart for you and Daphne? I know she is a mere child,
+a positive baby, to place at the head of a house which you have
+managed so cleverly all these years; but everything in this life
+must have a beginning, don’t you know, and I rely upon you
+for teaching Daphne how to manage her house.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That kind of thing cannot be taught, Edgar,’ answered his
+mother severely. ‘It must be the gradual growth of years in
+an adaptable mind. I don’t believe Daphne Lawford will ever
+be a housekeeper. It is not in her. You might as well expect
+a butterfly to sit upon its eggs with the patience of a farm-yard
+hen. However,’ sighed Mrs. Turchill, ‘you have chosen for
+yourself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you suppose I should let anyone else choose for me in
+such a matter, mother?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sorry for my lovely stock of house-linen. The tea-cloths
+will get used in the stable; and the kitchen-cloths will be
+made away with by wholesale.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind a few tea-cloths, mother.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But it is not a few, it is a great many. I daresay that out
+of the twelve dozen that are now in the linen-closet you won’t
+have two dozen sound ones a twelvemonth after your marriage.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I should survive even that loss, mother, if you were
+happy,’ answered Edgar lightly.</p>
+
+<p>‘How could I possibly be happy knowing the waste and
+destruction of things that I have taken so much trouble to get
+together? I’m sure I feel positively ill at the idea of the best
+glass and china under the authority of a girl of eighteen; your
+great grandmother’s Crown Derby dessert-set, which I have
+often been told is priceless.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, mother, by people who don’t want to buy it. If you
+wanted to sell it, you would hear a very different story. However,
+I don’t see any reason why Daphne should not be able to
+take care of the dessert-plates——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have always kept chamois-leather over each plate,’ interrupted
+Mrs. Turchill, with a pensive shake of her head.
+‘Will she take as much trouble?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Or why there should be waste and destruction anywhere.
+Daphne will not be the first young wife who ever had to take
+care of a house, and I know by the way she learnt to row how
+easy it is to teach her anything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Easy to teach her to row, or to ride, or to play lawn-tennis,
+or to do anything frivolous and useless, I have no doubt,’ retorted
+his mother; ‘but I don’t believe it is in her to learn
+careful ways, and the management of servants. I only hope<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</span>
+the waste and destruction will stop at the house-linen. I only
+hope she won’t bring ruin upon you; but when I think how
+many a young man of good means has been utterly ruined by
+an extravagant wife——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Upon my word, mother,’ protested Edgar, with a dash of
+resentment, feeling that this was too much, ‘you are making a
+perfect raven of yourself, instead of being cheery and pleasant,
+as I expected you to be. I’m sorry I have not been able to
+choose a wife more to your liking as a daughter-in-law; but
+marriage is one of the few circumstances of life in which selfishness
+is a duty, and a man must please himself at any hazard of
+displeasing other people. I don’t believe there’s a man who
+was at the Hunt Ball the other night who won’t envy me my
+good luck.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Very likely; since men are influenced by mere outside
+prettiness,’ said Mrs. Turchill. ‘Though even there Daphne is
+by no means faultless. Her nose is too short.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Now, mother, you have been so good to me all my life that
+it would be a very unnatural thing if you were to begin to be
+unkind all at once, and in a crisis of my life in which I most
+need your love,’ pleaded Edgar with genuine feeling.</p>
+
+<p>He put his arm round his mother’s waist, which, this time,
+was less inflexible than before. He turned the matron’s face
+towards his, and, lo! her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+
+<p>‘It would be very strange, indeed, if I could deny you anything,’
+she said, strangling a sob. ‘There never was a child so
+much indulged as you were. If you had cried for the moon, it
+would have quite worried me that I wasn’t able to get it for
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you would have given me a stable-lantern instead,’
+answered Edgar, smiling. ‘Yes, best of mothers, you have
+always been indulgent, and you are going to be indulgent now,
+and you will take Daphne to your heart of hearts, and be as
+fond of her as if she were that baby-girl you lost, grown up to
+womanhood.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t, Edgar, don’t!’ cried Mrs. Turchill, fairly overcome.
+‘Her bassinet is in the little oak room. I was looking at it
+yesterday. I have never got over that loss.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will think she has come back to you some day, when
+you have a little granddaughter,’ said Edgar tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, once reduced to the pathetic mood, was perfectly
+tractable. Edgar petted and soothed her; protested
+somewhat recklessly that the chief desire of Daphne’s life was
+to gain her affection; announced the intended afternoon visit;
+and obtained his mother’s promise of a gracious reception.</p>
+
+<p>When Miss Lawford and her sister arrived at about half-past
+four the drawing-room wore a hospitable aspect; a huge
+log burning in the Elizabethan fire-place; flowers of a homely<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</span>
+kind—chrysanthemums and Christmas roses, crocuses and snow-drops—about
+the rooms; and an old-fashioned silver tea-tray
+on an old-fashioned sofa-table, nothing of Adam or Chippendale
+or Queen Anne about it, but a good old ponderous piece of
+rosewood furniture, almost as heavy as a house.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill received her guests with gracious smiles and
+with a heartiness that took Daphne by surprise. She had made
+up her mind that she was going to be snubbed, and a dash of
+timidity gave a new grace to her beauty. She was very grave,
+and seemed, to Mrs. Turchill’s scrutinising eye, to be fully
+awakened to the responsibilities of her position. Could she but
+remain in this better frame of mind she might fairly be trusted
+with the Derby dessert-service and the piled-up treasures of
+the linen-closet.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill made Daphne sit on the sofa by her side while
+she poured out the tea, and was positively affectionate in her
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>‘You will be making tea in this pot before long,’ she said,
+with a loving glance at the fluted teapot. ‘It is not a good
+pourer. You’ll have to learn the knack of holding it exactly in
+the right position.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you are not sorry,’ faltered Daphne in a very low
+voice, meaning about the event generally, not with any special
+reference to the teapot.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, my dear, I am too truthful a woman to deny that it
+was a blow,’ returned Mrs. Turchill candidly. Edgar had kept
+out of the way when the sisters arrived, wishing his mother to
+have Daphne all to herself for a little while. ‘I suppose that
+kind of thing must always be a blow to a mother. “My son’s
+my son till he gets him a wife,” you know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope Edgar will never be any less your son than he is at
+this moment,’ said Daphne. ‘I should not like him so well as
+I do if thought his regard for me could make him one shade
+less devoted to you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, my dear, time will show,’ replied Mrs. Turchill doubtfully.
+‘As a rule young wives are very selfish; they expect to
+monopolise their husbands’ affection. All I hope is that you
+love Edgar as he deserves to be loved. There never was a
+worthier young man, and no girl could hope for a better husband
+than he will make.’</p>
+
+<p>To this exhortation Daphne replied nothing. She sat with
+downcast eyes, stirring her tea; and Mrs. Turchill, taking this
+silence for maidenly reserve, transferred her attentions to
+Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so sorry Mr. Goring did not drive over with you,’ she
+said. ‘I quite expected him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very kind,’ answered Lina. ‘He has gone to London.
+I had a telegram from Euston Station an hour ago.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</span>
+Gerald has some business to settle with his London lawyers, and
+is likely to be away for some days.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid you must find South Hill very dull in his
+absence,’ suggested Mrs. Turchill politely.</p>
+
+<p>‘I miss him very much; but I don’t think I am very dull.
+My father occupies a good deal of my time; and then there is
+Daphne, who has generally plenty to say for herself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Meaning that I am an insatiable chatterer,’ said Daphne,
+laughing. ‘I’m afraid it was Dibb—I mean Martha, an old
+schoolfellow of mine—who got me into the habit of talking so
+much.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Was she a great talker?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Quite the contrary. She rarely opened her mouth except
+to put something into it, so I acquired the pernicious habit of
+talking for two.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar now came in, and seeing Daphne and his mother
+seated side by side upon the sofa, felt himself exalted to the
+seventh heaven of tranquil joy. This and this only was needed
+to fill his cup of bliss: that his mother should be content, that
+life should flow on smoothly in the old grooves.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Daphne, how do you like the look of Hawksyard in
+the winter?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it is quite the nicest old place in the world. I
+haven’t seen much of the world; but I can’t imagine a more
+interesting old house.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will like it better and better as you become acquainted
+with it,’ said Mrs. Turchill. ‘It is one of the most convenient
+houses I ever saw, and I have seen a good many in my time.
+My husband’s mother was a capital housekeeper, and she did
+not rest till she had made the domestic arrangements as near
+perfection as was possible in her time. I have tried to follow
+in her footsteps.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And to make perfection still more perfect,’ said Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘There are modern inventions and improvements, Edgar,
+which your grandmother knew nothing about. Not that I hold
+with them all. If you are not tied for time,’ added Mrs. Turchill,
+addressing herself to the two young ladies, ‘I should very
+much like to show Daphne the domestic offices. It would give
+her an idea of what she will have to deal with by-and-by.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne, who knew about as much as a butterfly knows of
+the management of a house, smiled faintly but said nothing.
+She had come to Hawksyard determined to make herself pleasing
+to Mrs. Turchill, if it were possible, for Edgar’s sake.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ventured to tell them to take out the horses,’ said Edgar,
+‘knowing that you don’t dine till eight.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be pleased to stay as long as Mrs. Turchill likes,’
+answered Madoline; whereupon the matron, acknowledging this
+speech with a gracious bend, rose from her sofa, took her key-basket<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</span>
+from the table, and led the way to the corridor in which
+opened those china and linen stores which were the supreme
+delight of her soul.</p>
+
+<p>Swelling with pride and the consciousness of duty done, she
+displayed and descanted on her treasures and the convenient
+arrangement thereof; the old diamond-cut glass; the Bow, the
+Staffordshire, the Swansea, the Derby cups and saucers, and
+plates and dishes—crockery bought in the common way of life,
+and now of inestimable value. She showed her goodly piles of
+linen and damask, which a Flemish housewife might have envied.
+She led her guests to the dairy, which in its smaller and
+humbler way was as neat and dainty and ornamental as Her
+Majesty’s dairy at Frogmore. She talked learnedly of butter-making,
+cream-cheeses, and the disposal of skim milk. Daphne
+wondered to find how large a science was this domestic management
+of which she knew absolutely nothing.</p>
+
+<p>‘A house of this kind requires a great deal of care and a
+great deal of thought,’ said Mrs. Turchill with a solemn air.
+‘Old servants are a great comfort, but they have their drawbacks,
+and require to be kept in check. With a young, inexperienced
+mistress I’m afraid they will be tempted to take many
+liberties.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Turchill concluded her speech with a gentle sigh, and
+a regretful glance at Daphne—not an unfriendly look, by any
+means; but it expressed her foreboding of future ruin for the
+house of Hawksyard.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AND COME AGEN, BE IT BY DAY OR NIGHT.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> next three days passed somewhat slowly at South Hill.
+Unselfish as Madoline was, even her delight in Daphne’s engagement
+could not altogether compensate for Gerald’s absence.
+Life without him hung heavily. She missed him at all those
+accustomed hours which they had spent together. In the bright
+noontide, when he rode over fresh and full of vivacity after a
+late breakfast; in the afternoon dusk, when they had been
+wont to waste time so pleasantly beside the low wood fire; in
+the evening; always. He had been away for three days, and
+she had received only one shabby little letter—just a few feeble
+sentences explaining that he had been obliged to run up to
+London at an hour’s notice to see his lawyers upon some dry-as-dust
+business relating to his Stock Exchange investments. He
+hoped to settle it all speedily, and come back to Warwickshire.
+The letter gave her very little comfort.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am afraid he is being worried,’ she said to Daphne, after<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</span>
+she had read this brief communication two or three times over.
+‘It is not like one of his letters.’</p>
+
+<p>The week after the ball began with one of those dull Sundays
+which come down upon country life like an atmosphere of
+gloom, and seem to blot out all the pleasantness of creation. A
+drizzling Scotch-misty Sabbath, painfully suggestive of Glasgow
+and the Free Kirk. Madoline and Daphne walked to church,
+waterproofed to the eyes, and assisted sadly at a damp service;
+the whole congregation smelling of macintoshes; the drip drip
+from umbrellas on the encaustic pavement audible in the pauses
+of the Liturgy. It was a rule at South Hill that horses and
+coachmen should rest on the seventh day, save under direst pressure.
+Neither of the sisters objected to a wet walk. Edgar
+met them at church, having tramped over through mud and
+rain, much to the disgust of his mother, who deemed that
+to be absent from one’s parish church on a Sunday morning
+was a social misdemeanour not to be atoned for by the most
+fervent worship in a strange tabernacle. He joined Lina and
+her sister in the porch, and walked home with them by moist
+fields and a swollen Avon, whose fringe of willows never looked
+more funereal than on this dull wintry noontide, when the scant
+bare shoots stood straight up against a sky of level gray.</p>
+
+<p>‘Any news from Goring?’ asked Edgar, by way of making
+himself agreeable.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not since I saw you last. I fancy he must be very busy.
+He is usually such a good correspondent.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Busy!’ cried Edgar, laughing heartily at the idea. ‘What
+can he have to be busy about?—unless it’s the fit of a new suit
+of clothes, or some original idea in shooting-boots which he
+wants carried out, or the choice of a new horse; but, for that
+matter, I believe he doesn’t seriously care what he rides. Busy,
+indeed! He can’t know what work means. His bread was
+buttered for him on both sides, before he was born.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t that rather a juvenile notion of yours, Edgar?’ asked
+Madoline. ‘I believe the richest people are often the busiest.
+Property has its duties as well as its rights.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No doubt. But a rich man can always take the rights for
+his own share, and pay somebody else to perform the duties,’
+answered Edgar shrewdly. ‘And I should think Goring was
+about the last man to let his property be a source of care to him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘In this instance I am afraid he is being worried about it,’
+said Lina decisively; and with a look which seemed to say,
+‘nobody has any right to have an opinion about my lover.’</p>
+
+<p>The day was a long one, even with the assistance of Edgar
+in the task of getting through it. Daphne, considerably sobered
+by her engagement, behaved irreproachably all the afternoon
+and evening; but she stifled a good many yawns, until the effort
+made her eyes water.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</span></p>
+
+<p>Her father had been unusually kind to her since the announcement
+of her betrothal. All his anxieties about her—and
+it had been the habit of his mind to regard her as a source of
+trouble and difficulty, or even of future woe—were now set at
+rest. Married in the early bloom of her girlhood to such a man
+as Edgar, all her life to come would be so fenced round and protected,
+so sheltered and guarded by love and honour, that perversity
+itself could scarce go astray.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne’s mother was spoiled before I married her,’ he told
+himself, remembering the misery of his second marriage. ‘If I
+had won her before her heart was corrupted our lives might have
+been different.’</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him, looking at the matter soberly, that there
+could be no better alliance for his younger daughter than this
+with Edgar Turchill. He had seen them together continually,
+in a companionship which seemed full of pleasure for both:
+boating together, at lawn-tennis, at billiards, sympathising, as it
+appeared to him from his superficial point of view, in every
+thought and feeling. It never occurred to him that this was a
+mere surface sympathy, and that the hidden deeps of Daphne’s
+mind and soul were far beyond the plummet-line of Edgar’s
+sympathy or comprehension. Sir Vernon had made up his mind
+that his younger daughter was a frivolous butterfly-being, who
+needed only frivolous pleasures and girlish amusements to make
+her happy.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody, or almost everybody, approved of Daphne’s engagement.
+It was pleasant to the girl to live for a little while
+in an atmosphere of praise. Even Aunt Rhoda, upon whose
+being Daphne had exercised the kind of influence which some
+people feel when there is a cat in the room, even Aunt Rhoda
+professed herself delighted. She came over between the showers
+and the church services upon this particular Sunday, on purpose
+to tell Daphne how very heartily she approved of her conduct.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have acted wisely for once in your life,’ she said sententiously;
+‘I hope it is the beginning of many wise acts. I
+suppose you will be married at the same time as Lina. The
+double wedding will have a very brilliant effect, and will save
+your father ever so much trouble and expense.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh no; I should not like that,’ cried Daphne hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>‘You wouldn’t like a double wedding!’ ejaculated Mrs.
+Ferrers indignantly. ‘Why, what a vain, arrogant little person
+you must be. I suppose you fancy your own importance would
+be lessened if you were married at the same time as your elder
+sister?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, no, Aunt; indeed, it is not that. I am quite content
+to seem of no account beside Lina. I love her far too dearly to
+envy her superiority. But—if—when—I am married I should
+like it to be very quietly—no people looking on—no fuss—no<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</span>
+fine gowns. When my father and Edgar have made up their
+minds that the proper time has come, I should like just to walk
+into my uncle’s church early some morning, with papa and Lina,
+and for Edgar to meet us there, just as quietly as if we were
+poor people, and for no one to be told anything about it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What a romantic schoolgirlish notion!’ said Mrs. Ferrers
+contemptuously. ‘Such a marriage would be a discredit to
+your family; and I should think it most unlikely my brother
+would ever give his consent to such a hole-and-corner way of
+doing things.’</p>
+
+<p>The one person at South Hill who absolutely refused to smile
+upon Daphne’s engagement was Madoline’s faithful Mowser.
+That devoted female received the announcement with shrugs
+and ominous shakings of a head which carried itself as if it were
+the living temple of wisdom, and in a manner incomplete without
+that helmet of Minerva which obviously of right belonged
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t seem as pleased as the rest of us at the notion of
+this second marriage,’ said good-tempered Mrs. Spicer, housekeeper
+and cook, to whom ‘the family’ was the central point of
+the universe; sun, moon, and stars, earth and ocean, and the
+residue of mankind, being merely so much furniture created to
+make ‘the family’ comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hear and see and say nothing,’ answered Mowser, as oracular
+in most of her utterances as Friar Bacon’s brazen head.
+‘Time will show.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, all I can say is,’ said Jinman, ‘that our Miss Daphne
+is an uncommon pretty girl, and deserves a good husband. She
+has just that spice of devilry in her which I like in a woman.
+Your even-tempered girls are too insipid for my taste.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose you would have admired the spice of devilry in
+Miss Daphne’s mar,’ retorted Mowser venomously, ‘which made
+her run away from her husband.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Mrs. Mowser; I draw the line at that. A man may
+want to get rid of his wife, but he don’t like her to take the
+initial’—Mr. Jinman meant initiative—‘and bolt. A spice of
+devilry is all very well, but one doesn’t want the entire animal.
+I like a shake of the grater in my negus, but I don’t desire the
+whole nutmeg. But I do think that it’s a low-minded thing to
+cast up Miss Daphne’s mar whenever the young lady’s talked
+about. Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Mr. Jinman,’ said Mowser, ‘all I hope is, that Miss
+Daphne will carry through her engagement now she’s made it.
+She’s welcome to her own sweetheart, as far as I am concerned,
+so long as she doesn’t hanker after other people’s.’</p>
+
+<p>The phrase sounded vague, and neither Mr. Jinman, nor
+Mrs. Spicer, nor the coachman (who had dropped in to tea and
+toast and a poached egg or two in the housekeeper’s room) had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</span>
+any clear idea of what Mowser meant, except that it was something
+ill-natured. On that point there was no room to doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Another week wore on, the second after the ball, and
+Gerald Goring had not yet returned. He wrote every other
+day, telling Madoline all he had been doing; the picture-galleries
+and theatres he had visited, the clubs at which he had
+dined; yet in all these letters of his, affectionate as they were,
+there was a tone which sustained in Lina’s mind the idea that
+her lover was in some way troubled or worried. The few words
+which gave rise to this impression were slight enough; she
+hardly knew how or why the notion had entered her mind, but
+it was there, and remained there, and it increased her anxiety
+for his return to an almost painful degree. While she was
+expecting him daily and hourly, a much longer letter arrived,
+which on the first reading almost broke her heart:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear One</span>,—I write in tremendous excitement and
+flurry of mind to tell you something which I fear may displease
+you; yet at the very beginning I will disarm your wrath by
+saying that if you put a veto upon this intention of mine it shall
+be instantly abandoned. Subject to this, dear love, I am going,
+in hot haste, to Canada. Don’t be startled, Lina. It is no
+more nowadays than going to Scotland. Men I know go across
+for the salmon-fishing every autumn, and are absent so short a
+time that their friends hardly miss them from the beaten tracks
+at home.</p>
+
+<p>‘And now I will tell you what has put this Canadian idea
+into my head. I have for some time been feeling a little below
+par—mopish, lymphatic, disinclined for exertion of any kind.
+My holiday in the Orkneys was a <em>dolce far niente</em> business,
+which did me no real good. I went the other day to a famous
+doctor in Cavendish Square, a man who puts our prime ministers
+on their legs when they are inclined to drop, like tired cab
+horses, under the burden of the public weal. He ausculted me
+carefully, found me sound in wind and limb, but nerves and
+muscles alike in need of bracing. “You want change of scene
+and occupation,” he said, “and a climate that will make you
+exert yourself. Go to Vienna and skate.” I daresay this would
+have been good advice for a man who had never seen Vienna;
+but as I know that brilliant capital by heart, with all its virtues,
+and a few of its vices, I rejected it. “Please yourself,” said my
+physician, pocketing his fee; “but I recommend complete
+change, and the hardest climate you can bear.” I do not feel
+sure that I intended to take his advice, or should have thought
+any more about it; but I happened to meet Lord Loftus Berwick,
+the Duke of Bamborough’s youngest son, and an old Eton
+chum of mine, in the smoking-room at the Reform that very
+evening, and he told me he was just off to Canada, dilated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</span>
+enthusiastically upon the delights of that wintry region, and the
+various sports congenial to the month of February. He goes
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">viâ</i> New York, Delaware and Hudson Railway to Montreal,
+thence to Quebec, and from Quebec by the Intercolonial Railway
+to Rimouski, where he is to charter a small schooner and
+cross the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Natashquan River,
+which river belongs to two particular friends of his, both distinguished
+comedians, and men of unbounded popularity on
+each side of the Atlantic. Here Loftus proposes to hunt
+cariboo, moose, elk, and I don’t know what else. But before he
+puts on his snow-shoes, loads his sledges, and harnesses his dogs
+for those happy hunting-grounds, he is going to revel in the
+more civilised and sophisticated pleasures of a Canadian winter,
+curling-clubs, sleigh-rides around the mountain at Montreal,
+tobogganing at the Falls of Montmorenci, near Quebec, and so
+on. Just the thing for me, thought I—a hard climate, only
+about eight days’ voyage—if my dearest did not object to my
+being away from my natural place at her feet for five or six
+weeks. At my hinting a wish to accompany him Loftus became
+still more enthusiastic, and was eager to have the whole thing
+settled that moment. And now, love, it is for you to decide.
+I think the run would do me good; but perish the thought of
+benefit to me if it must be bought at the price of pain to you.
+Loftus is going in the Cunard, which leaves Liverpool the day
+after to-morrow. Telegraph your wishes, and be assured beforehand
+of obedience from your devoted slave,</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+‘<span class="smcap">Gerald Goring</span>.’<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Madoline’s first thoughts were of the pain of being parted
+from her lover, whose presence had for so long been the sunshine
+of her days, and so much a part of her life, that she
+seemed scarcely to live while he was away from her. Existence
+was reduced to a mere mechanical moving about, and doing
+duties which had lost all their savour. But these first thoughts,
+being selfish, were swiftly succeeded in a mind so entirely unselfish
+by other considerations. If it were for Gerald’s good
+that he should go to the other end of the world, that they
+should be parted for much longer than the five or six weeks of
+which he spoke so lightly, it would not have been in Madoline’s
+nature to desire him to forego even a possible advantage. She
+had fancied sometimes of late that he was occasionally dull and
+low-spirited; and now this letter explained all. He was out of
+health. He had been leading too quiet and womanish a life, no
+doubt, in his willingness to spend his days in her society. He
+had foregone all those hardy exercises and field sports which
+are so necessary to a man who has no serious work in life.
+Madoline’s telegram ran thus:</p>
+
+<p>‘Go by all means, if you think the change will do you good.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</span>
+I tremble at the idea of your crossing the sea at this time of the
+year. Let me see you before you go. If you cannot come here,
+I will ask my aunt to go to London with me that I may at
+least bid you good-bye.’</p>
+
+<p>The answer came as quickly as electricity could bring it, and
+although laconic, was satisfactory: ‘I will be with you about
+five o’clock this afternoon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear fellow, how little he thinks of the trouble of travelling
+so many miles to please me,’ thought Madoline; and the
+idea of her lover’s affection sustained her against the pain of
+parting.</p>
+
+<p>‘Next year I shall have the right to go wherever he goes,’
+she told herself.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne heard of the Canadian expedition, but said so little
+about it that Lina wondered at her coolness.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you would have been more surprised,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you? Why, there is really nothing startling or uncommon
+in the idea,’ answered Daphne smilingly. ‘This rushing
+about the world for sport seems the most fashionable thing
+among young men with plenty of money. The Society Journals
+are always telling us how Lord This or Sir John That has
+gone to the Rockies to shoot wild sheep, or to the North Pole
+for bears, or to Hungary or Wallachia, or the Balkan range.
+The beaten tracks count for nothing nowadays.’</p>
+
+<p>When the afternoon came, Lina was alone to receive her
+lover. Daphne had been seized with a dutiful impulse towards
+her aunt, and had gone to drink tea at the Rectory, with Edgar
+in attendance upon her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Won’t you defer your duty-visit till to-morrow, and wish
+Gerald good-bye?’ asked Lina, when Daphne proposed the
+expedition.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, dear; you can do that for me. This is an occasion on
+which you ought to have him all to yourself. You will have so
+much to say to each other.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If it were mother, she would occupy all the time in begging
+him to wear flannels, put cork soles in all his boots, and avoid
+damp beds,’ said Edgar laughing. ‘Now, Daphne, put on your
+hat as quick as you can. It’s a lovely afternoon for a walk
+across the fields. If this frost continues we shall have skating
+presently.’</p>
+
+<p>The daylight faded slowly; a bright frosty day, a clear and
+rosy sunset. Lina sat by the pretty hearth in her morning-room,
+and exactly as the clock struck five the footman brought
+in her dainty little tea-tray, set out the table before the fire, and
+lighted three or four wax-candles in the old Sèvres candelabra
+on the mantelpiece. Here she and her lover would be secure
+from the interruption of callers, which they could not be if in
+the drawing-room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</span></p>
+
+<p>Five minutes after the hour there came the sound of wheels
+upon the gravel drive, a loud ring at the bell, and in the next
+instant the door of the morning-room was opened, and Gerald
+came in, looking bulkier than usual in his furred travelling
+coat.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear Gerald, this is so good of you!’ said Madoline, rising
+to welcome him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest!’ he took both her hands, and stood looking at her
+in the firelight, with a countenance full of tenderness—a mournful
+tenderness—as if he were saddened by the thought of parting.
+‘You are not angry with me for leaving you for a few
+weeks?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Angry, when you are told the change is necessary for your
+health! How could you think me so selfish? Let me look at
+you. Yes; you are looking ill—pale and wan. Gerald, you have
+been ill, seriously ill, perhaps, since you left here, and you would
+not tell me for fear of alarming me. I am sure that it is so.
+Your letters were so hurried, so different from——’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear girl, you are mistaken. I told you the exact truth
+about myself when I owned to feeling mopish and depressed. I
+have had no actual illness; but I feel that a run across the
+Atlantic will revive and invigorate me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And it is quite right of you to go, if the voyage is not dangerous
+in this weather.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear love, it is no more dangerous than calling a hansom to
+take one down Regent Street. The hansom may come to grief
+somehow, or there may be a gale between Liverpool and New
+York; but there is hardly any safer way a man can dispose of
+his life than to trust himself to a Cunard steamer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And do you think you will enjoy yourself in Canada?’</p>
+
+<p>‘As much as I can enjoy myself anywhere, away from you.
+According to my friend Loftus, a Canadian winter is the acme
+of bliss; and if the winter should break up early, we may contrive
+to get a little run into the Hudson’s Bay country, and a
+glimpse of the Rockies before we come home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That sounds as if you meant to stay rather a long time,’
+said Lina, with a touch of anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed, no, dear. At latest I shall be with you before April
+is half over. Think what is to happen early in May.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My coming of age. It seems so absurd to come of age at
+twenty-five, when one is almost an old woman.’</p>
+
+<p>‘An old woman verily. A girl as fresh in youthful purity as
+if her cheek still wore the baby-bloom of seventeen summers!
+But have you forgotten something else that is to happen next
+May, Lina—our wedding?’</p>
+
+<p>‘There has been nothing fixed about that,’ faltered Madoline
+‘except, perhaps, that it is to be this year. My father has not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</span>
+said a word as to the actual time, and I know that he wants to
+keep me as long as he can.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And I think you know that I want to have you at the
+Abbey as soon as I can. I am getting to loathe that big house,
+for lack of your presence to transform it into a home. We
+must be married in May, dearest. Remember we have only
+been waiting for you to come of age, and for all dry-as-dust
+questions of property to be settled. If we had been Darby the
+gardener and Joan the dairymaid, we should have been married
+four years ago, shouldn’t we, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose so,’ she answered, blushing, and taking refuge in
+the occupation of pouring out the tea, adjusting the egg-shell
+cups and saucers, the slender little rat-tailed spoons, all the
+dainty affectations and quaintnesses of high-art tea-drinking,
+‘Darby and Joan are always so imprudent.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, but they are often happy. They marry foolishly, and
+perhaps starve a little after marriage; but they wed while the
+first bloom is on their love. Come, Lina, say that we shall be
+married early in May.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can promise nothing without my father’s consent. My
+aunt was suggesting that Daphne and I should be married on
+the same day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did she?’ asked Gerald, his head bent, his hands engaged
+with his cup and saucer. ‘Two victims led to the altar: Iphigenia
+and Polyxena, and no likelihood of a hind being substituted
+for either young lady. Don’t you think there is a dash of
+vulgarity in a double wedding: a desire to make the very most
+of the event, to intensify the parade: two sets of bridesmaids,
+two displays of presents, two honeymoon departures: all the
+tawdriness and show and artificiality of a modern wedding exaggerated
+by duplication?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think that is rather Daphne’s idea. She begs that she
+and Edgar may be married very quietly, without fuss of any
+kind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I had no idea that Daphne was capable of such wisdom. I
+thought she would have asked for four-and-twenty bridesmaids,’
+said Gerald with a cynical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘She is much more sensible than you have ever given her
+credit for being,’ answered Madoline, a little offended at his
+tone. ‘She has behaved sweetly since her engagement.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And—you—think—she—is—happy?’</p>
+
+<p>How slowly he said this, stirring his tea all the while, as if
+the words were spoken mechanically, his thoughts being wide-away
+from them.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you suppose I should be satisfied if I were not sure, in
+my own mind, of her happiness? How can she fail to be happy?
+She is engaged to a thoroughly good man, who adores her; and
+if—if she is not quite as deep in love with him as he is with her,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</span>
+there is no doubt that her affection for him will increase and
+strengthen every day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Naturally. He will flatter and fool her till—were it only
+from sheer vanity—she will ultimately find him necessary to her
+existence. I knew he had only to persevere in order to win her.
+I told him so last summer.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And Edgar is grateful to you for encouraging him when he
+was inclined to despair. He told me so yesterday. But do not
+let us talk of Daphne all the time. I want you to tell me about
+yourself. How good it was of you to come down to say good-bye!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Could I do less, dearest? Good-byes are always painful,
+even when the parting is to be of the briefest, as in this case:
+but from the moment I knew you wished to see me it was my
+duty to come.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can you stay here to-night?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can stay exactly ten minutes, and no more. I have to
+catch the half-past six express.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are not going to the Abbey?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No. I have written to my steward, and I am such a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">roi
+fainéant</i> at the best of times that my coming or going makes
+very little difference. I leave the new hot-houses under your
+care and governance, subject to MacCloskie, who governs you.
+All their contents are to be for the separate use and maintenance
+of your rooms while I am away.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall be smothered with flowers.’</p>
+
+<p>‘May there be never a thorn among them! And now, love,
+adieu. This time to-morrow I shall be steaming out of the
+Mersey. I have to see that Dickson has not come to grief in
+the preparation of my outfit. A man wants a world of strange
+things for Canada, according to the outfitters. My own love,
+good-bye!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye, Gerald dearest, best, good-bye. Every wind that
+blows will make me miserable while you are on the sea. You’ll
+let me know directly you arrive, won’t you? You’ll put me out
+of my misery as soon as you can?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll cable the hour I land.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That will be so good of you,’ she said, going with him to the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>How calm and clear the frosty evening looked! how vivid
+the steely stars up yonder above the feathery tree-tops! how
+peaceful and happy all the world!</p>
+
+<p>‘God bless you, dear one!’ said each to each, as they kissed
+their parting kiss—both hearts so heavy; but one so pure and
+free from guile; the other so weighed down by secret cares that
+could not be told.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘AY FLETH THE TIME, IT WOL NO MAN ABIDE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nearly</span> six months had gone since that wintry parting, when
+the lovers clasped hands and blessed each other under the sign
+of Aries; and now it was midsummer, and all the fields were
+green, and the limes were breaking into blossom, and the hawthorn-flower
+was dead, and the last of the blue-bells had faded,
+and all the white orchard-blooms, the tender loveliness of spring,
+belonged to the past; for the beauty of earth and nature is a
+thing of perpetual change, so closely allied with death that in
+every rapture there is the beginning of a regret.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring had returned, not quite so soon as he had
+promised beside the winter hearth, but in time to offer birthday
+greetings to Lina, and to assist in those legal preparations and
+argumentations which preceded the marriage settlement; in this
+case a formidable document, involving large interests, and full
+of consideration for children and grandchildren yet unborn;
+for daughters dying unmarried, or requiring to be dowered for
+marriage; for sons who might have to make marriage settlements
+of their own. There was to be a complete family history,
+put hypothetically, in Miss Lawford’s marriage settlement.</p>
+
+<p>Vainly had Lina tried to dower her sister with half, or at
+least some portion of her own wealth. Daphne obstinately
+refused to accept any such boon; and Edgar as obstinately
+sustained her in her determination.</p>
+
+<p>‘I won’t accept a penny,’ said she.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t want a halfpenny with her,’ said he; a refusal
+which Mrs. Turchill considered supreme folly on the part of
+son and daughter-in-law; for what improvements might have
+been made at Hawksyard with a few spare thousands, whereas
+her son’s income, though ample for all the needs and comforts
+of this life, left no margin for building.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why should not Daphne have a range of hot-houses like
+those Mr. Goring has built for her sister?’ argued Mrs. Turchill.
+‘Or why should not you rebuild the stables, which are dreadfully
+old-fashioned?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I would not change the dear old fashion for worlds,
+mother, now that I have made every sanitary improvement,’
+answered Edgar; ‘least of all would I improve Hawksyard into
+a modern house with Goring’s money.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But it is not Mr. Goring’s money that is offered; it is Miss
+Lawford’s.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is the same thing. The loss would be his. Don’t
+talk any more about it, mother; Daphne and I have made
+up our minds.’</p>
+
+<p>This was decisive; for Mrs. Turchill knew that Daphne’s<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</span>
+word was Edgar’s law. She was reconciled to the idea of the
+marriage, but in her confidences with Deborah, she could not
+help talking of her son’s attachment as an infatuation.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald had come back considerably improved in health and
+spirits by his Canadian and Hudson’s Bay adventures. He had
+crossed the Turtle Mountain, and the arid plains beyond, and
+from the crest of one of the Sweet Grass Hills had seen the
+rugged and snowy outline of the Rockies, standing out in full
+relief against the western sky-line. He had shot a bear or two,
+and had some experience of wolves. He had eaten pemmican,
+and ridden a woolly horse; he had slept at a Hudson’s Bay
+station, and had passed a night or two, half-frozen and wholly
+awake, under canvas. Variety and adventure had done him good
+physically and mentally; and he told himself that of that fever
+which had tormented him when he left England—a fever of
+foolish longings and fond regrets, idle thoughts of things that
+might have been—he was cured wholly. Yet who shall say
+whether time might not show some resemblance between this
+cure and that of a dangerous lunatic, who is discharged from
+Bedlam a sane man, and who cuts his mother’s head off with a
+carving-knife a fortnight after his release?</p>
+
+<p>The double wedding was to take place in October. Nothing
+could induce Sir Vernon to consent to an earlier date.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall lose my darling soon enough,’ he said, ignoring
+Daphne in his calculations of loss. ‘Let me keep her till the
+end of the summer. Let us spend this one summer together.
+Who knows that it may not be my last?’</p>
+
+<p>Any wish expressed by her father would have governed
+Madoline’s conduct, and this wish, expressed so stringently,
+could not be disregarded. Sir Vernon was frequently ailing, in
+a languid half-hearted way, which looked like hypochondriasis,
+but might be actual disease, and a part of that organic evil
+which was never clearly described. His doctor recommended
+an entire change of scene—Switzerland, the Engadine, if he
+could make up his mind to travel so far, and to be satisfied with
+the simpler diet and accommodation of that skyey world. There
+was a good deal of discussion, and it was ultimately settled
+that Sir Vernon and his daughters should start for Switzerland
+at the end of June, and move quietly about there, studying
+the invalid’s pleasure in all things. Sir Vernon set his face
+against the Engadine, preferring the more civilised shores of
+Lake Leman, which he knew by heart.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had never been beyond Fontainebleau, and was enraptured
+at the idea of seeing snow-clad mountains and strange
+people. Gerald and Edgar were to be of the party, and they
+were only to return to England in time for the double wedding.
+The sisters were to be married on the same day, after all.
+That had been settled for them arbitrarily by family and friends,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</span>
+despite Daphne’s objection; and Warwickshire people were
+already beginning to speculate upon the details of the ceremony,
+and to wonder what dean or bishop would be privileged
+to tie the knot, assisted by the Rev. Marmaduke Ferrers.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne’s conduct since her engagement had been unobjectionable.
+Nobody could deny her sweetness, or could fail to
+approve the sobriety which had come over her manners and
+conversation. Her hot fits and cold fits, her high spirits and low
+spirits, were all over. She was uniformly amiable and uniformly
+grave—not taking rapturous pleasure in anything, but seemingly
+contented with her lot in life, devoted in her affection to her
+sister, unvaryingly kind to her lover. Edgar was never tired of
+thanking heaven for the blessedness of his lot. He had remitted
+his tenants five-and-twenty per cent. of their March rents; not
+that there was any special need for such indulgence, but because
+he longed to be generous to somebody, and to disseminate his
+overflowing joy.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall do the same for you next October, in honour of my
+marriage,’ he said in his speech at the audit dinner; ‘and after
+that I shall want all the money you can pay me, as a family
+man.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline, utterly happy in her lover’s society, after that
+interval of severance which had seemed so long and dreary, cared
+very little where their lives were to be spent, so long as they
+were to be together. Yet the idea of revisiting Lake Leman—which
+she had seen and loved seven years ago in a quiet pilgrimage
+with her father—with Gerald for her attendant and
+companion, had a certain fascination.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is rather like anticipating our honeymoon, is it not,
+dear?’ he asked laughingly. ‘But when the honeymoon comes
+we shall find some new world to explore.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you like to take me to the Red River?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think that would be a shade too rough, even for your
+endurance. The Italian lakes, and a winter in Rome, would
+suit us better. It is all very well for a man to travel in a district
+where he has to cover his face with a muffler, and head the
+driving snow, till he is nearly suffocated with his frozen breath,
+and has to get himself thawed carefully at the first camp-fire;
+but that kind of experience lasts a long time, and it is pleasing
+to fall back upon the old habit of luxurious travelling, and to
+ride in a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coupé</i> through Mont Cenis or St. Gotthard, and to
+arrive at one’s destination without any large risk of being swallowed
+whole in a swamp, or burned alive in a prairie fire.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall delight in seeing Rome with you,’ Madoline answered
+gently.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you would like it. I really know my Rome. It
+is a subject I have studied thoroughly, and I shall love playing
+cicerone for you.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</span></p>
+
+<p>It was midsummer, a perfect midsummer evening, the placid
+sky still faintly tinted with rose and amethyst yonder where the
+sun had just gone down behind the undulating line of willows.
+The little town of Stratford lay in its valley, folded in a purple
+cloud, only the slender church spire rising clear and sharp against
+that tranquil evening sky. Daphne had stolen away from Madoline
+and Gerald, who were sitting on the terrace, while Edgar,
+chained to his post in the dining-room by a lengthy monologue
+upon certain political difficulties, with which Sir Vernon was
+pleased to favour him, vainly longed for liberty to rejoin his
+idol. She had put on her hat, and had set out upon a lonely
+pilgrimage to Stratford. They were all to leave South Hill
+early to-morrow, and it was Daphne’s fancy to bid good-bye
+to the church which sheltered those ashes it were the worst of
+sacrilege to disturb.</p>
+
+<p>It was an idle fancy, no doubt, engendered of a mind prone
+to idle thoughts; but Daphne, having no urgent occupation for
+her time this evening, fancied she had a right to indulge it.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am going for a little walk,’ she had told Edgar, as she left
+the dining-room; ‘don’t fidget yourself about me.’</p>
+
+<p>From which moment poor Edgar had been in agonies of restlessness,
+turning an ear deafer than any adder’s to Sir Vernon’s
+disquisition upon the critical state of the country, and the utter
+incapacity of the men in office to deal with such a crisis, and
+inwardly chafing against every extension of the subject which
+prolonged the seemingly endless discourse.</p>
+
+<p>‘A little walk!’ and why, and where, and with whom? Vainly
+did Edgar’s strained gaze explore the distant landscape. From
+his position at the dinner-table, he could see a fine range of
+country ten or fifteen miles away; but never a glimpse of terrace
+or garden by which Daphne must go. And it was the rule of
+his life to show Sir Vernon the extremity of respect, an almost
+old-fashioned and Grandisonian reverence. Therefore to cut
+short that prosy discourse was impossible.</p>
+
+<p>The blessed moment of release came at last. Sir Vernon
+finished his claret with a sigh, and left nation and ministry to
+their fate. Edgar hurried to the terrace. Gerald and Madoline
+were sipping their coffee at a little rustic bamboo table, the
+Maltese Fluff lying luxuriously in his mistress’s silken lap.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you any idea where Daphne has gone?’ Edgar asked
+despairingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, indeed. I saw her stroll down towards the river.
+Perhaps she has gone to see her aunt.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks, yes, I daresay,’ replied Edgar, speeding off towards
+the Rectory without waiting to consider whether the clue were
+worth following.</p>
+
+<p>While Mr. Turchill was hastening across the fields at a racing
+pace, Daphne was seated in her boat, quietly drifting towards<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</span>
+Stratford, along a dreamy twilit river, where every willow had a
+ghostly look in the evening dimness.</p>
+
+<p>She was full of grave thoughts on this her last night in
+Warwickshire. It was more than a year—a year and a quarter—since
+she had come home for good, as the phrase goes, and a
+year and a quarter makes a large section of a young life. The
+years are so long in early youth, when the heart and mind live
+so fast, and every day is a history: so strangely different from
+the monotonous years of middle age, which glide past unawares,
+like the level flats seen from a canal-boat, each meadow so like
+the last that the voyager is unconscious of progress, till he feels
+the salt breath of Death’s ocean creeping across the low marshes
+of declining life, and knows that his journey is nearly done.</p>
+
+<p>To Daphne that year at South Hill had been a lifetime.
+How ardently she had felt and thought and suffered within the
+time; what resolutions made and broken; what fevers of dangerous
+delight, and dull intervals of remorse; what wild wicked
+hopes; what black despair! Looking back at the time that was
+gone and dead, she was inclined to exaggerate its joys, to gloss
+over its pain.</p>
+
+<p>‘At the worst I have been happy with him,’ she said, remembering
+how much of that vanished time had been spent in Gerald
+Goring’s society, ‘though he is nothing to me, and never can be
+anything to me but a man to be shunned; yet we have been
+happy together, and that is something.’</p>
+
+<p>She remembered some lines of Dryden’s which Gerald had
+quoted in her presence:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘To-morrow do thy worst, for I have lived to-day.</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">The joys I have possessed, in spite of Fate, are mine.’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>She had lived her day. There had been moments in the past;
+moments that had stirred the deeps of her soul with a power as
+mysterious as the sweep of the angelic wing on Bethesda’s pool;
+moments when she had fancied herself beloved by him, whom
+to love was treason. These stood out upon the page of memory
+in fiery characters, and in their supernal light all the rest of the
+record seemed dull and dark. There had been hours of unquestioning
+bliss when she had in no wise reasoned upon her happiness,
+when she had not asked herself whether she was loved or
+scorned, but had been happy as the summer insects are among
+the flowers, vivified by the sunshine, asking nothing but to live
+and enjoy that glorious warmth and brightness. So at times she
+had abandoned herself to the delight of his society, whom she
+had loved from the hour of their first meeting, giving all her
+heart and mind to him at once, as utterly as Juliet gave hers to
+Romeo.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</span></p>
+
+<p>She had lived her day. The long vista of to-morrow and
+to-morrow opened before her joyless gaze, and she could look
+down the tranquil path it was her fate to tread, a wife beloved
+and honoured, a sister fondly loved, a daughter reconciled with
+her father, mistress of a fine old house, full of quaint and pleasant
+associations, established for life in the heart of rural scenes
+which her soul loved. Surely it was not a destiny to be contemplated
+with such profound sadness as shadowed her face to-night,
+while she leant listlessly on her oars and drifted down the full
+dark river.</p>
+
+<p>All was very quiet below the bridge when she landed at the
+boat-builder’s yard, and left her craft in charge of that amphibious
+and more than half-intoxicated hanger-on who is generally
+to be found waiting on fortune at every landing-stage. The walk
+to the church was dark and shadowy; lights twinkling in the
+low cottage windows; glimpses of home-life dimly seen through
+open doors. Daphne walked quickly to the avenue of limes,
+that green odorous aisle that leads to the porch. There had been
+evening service, and the lights were still burning here and there,
+and the heavy old door stood ajar. Daphne pushed it gently
+open, and crept into the church, past the stately monuments of
+mediæval Cloptons, whose marble effigies reposed in solemn
+pomp upon sculptured tombs, rich in armorial emblazonment.
+In the faint light and mysterious shadow the stony figures looked
+like real sleepers, waiting for the last dread summons. Daphne
+stole past them with noiseless footfall, and crept along the aisle
+to the lovely old chancel, where, just within the altar-rails,
+William Shakespeare takes his last earthly rest. The sexton
+came out of the vestry to see whose footfall it was that fell so
+lightly on that everlasting flint. Daphne was standing by the
+altar-rail in a reverie, looking up at the calm sculptured face, so
+serene in its contentment with a life which, in the vast range
+and dominion of a mind that was in itself a kingdom, had held
+all things worth having. These are the full and rounded lives,
+complete and perfect in themselves, the calm and placid lives of
+contemplative men, for whom the gates of the spiritual universe
+stand ever open, who are in no wise dependent upon the joys,
+and gains, and triumphs of this work-a-day world.</p>
+
+<p>‘Were you always happy, my calm-faced Shakespeare?’
+wondered Daphne. ‘Could you have sounded all the deeps of
+sorrow without having yourself suffered? I think not. Yet
+there seems hardly any room in your life for great sorrow, except
+perhaps in the loss of that child who died young. Was
+Ann Hathaway your only love, I wonder—you who wrote so
+sweetly of sorrowful hopeless love—or was there another, another
+whom we know as Juliet, and Imogen, and Cordelia:
+another from whom you always lived far apart, yet whom you
+always loved?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ said the sexton; ‘I’m going to lock
+up the church.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me stay a few minutes longer,’ pleaded Daphne, taking
+out her purse. ‘I am going away from England to-morrow, and
+I have come to say good-bye to the dear old church.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you going to be away long, miss?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nearly three months.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s a very short time,’ said the old man, pocketing
+Daphne’s half-crown. ‘I thought perhaps you were going away
+for many years—going to settle somewhere across the sea. It
+hardly seems like saying good-bye to the church if you are to be
+back among us this side Michaelmas.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No,’ said Daphne dreamily, looking along the shadowy nave,
+where broken rays of moonlight from the painted windows shone
+upon the dark oak benches like dropped jewels. ‘It is not long;
+but one never knows. To-night I feel as if it were going to be
+for ever. I am so fond of this old church.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No wonder, miss. It’s a beautiful church. You should
+hear the Americans admire it. I suppose they’ve nothing half
+as good in their country.’</p>
+
+<p>The moon was up when Daphne left the church, and walked
+round by head-stones and memorial-crosses to the shaded path
+beside the river, where here and there a seat on the low wall
+invited the weary to repose in the cool shade of ancient elms.
+The broad full river looked calm and bright under the moonlit
+sky; the murmur of the weir sounded like a lullaby.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne walked slowly to the end of the path, and stood for
+a long time looking down at the river. She felt curiously loth
+to leave the spot. Yet it was time she were on her homeward
+way. They would miss her, perhaps, and be perplexed, and
+even anxious about her. But in the next moment she dismissed
+the idea of any such anxiety on her behalf.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina will not think about me while Mr. Goring is with her;
+and my father is not likely to trouble himself. There is only
+poor Edgar, and he will guess which way I have come, and
+follow me if he takes it into his head to be uneasy.’</p>
+
+<p>Reassured by this idea, Daphne resolved to gratify her fancy
+for farewells to the uttermost, and to say good-bye to the house
+where the poet was born. Stratford streets were very empty
+and quiet at this period of the summer evening, and she met
+only a few people between the churchyard and the sacred dwelling.
+To a stranger, entrance into the sanctuary at such an hour
+would have been out of the question; but Daphne was on
+friendly terms with the lady custodians of the temple, and
+knew she could coax them to unlock the door for her pleasure.
+Never lamp or candle was admitted within the precincts, but
+on such a night as this there would be no need for artificial
+light; and Daphne only wanted to creep into the quaint old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</span>
+rooms, to look round her quietly for a minute or two, and feel
+the spirit of the place breathing poetry into her soul.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have such a strange fancy that I may never see these
+things again,’ she said to herself as she stood in the moonlit
+garden, where only such flowers grew as were known in Shakespeare’s
+time.</p>
+
+<p>The two ladies lived in a snug little house with a strictly
+Elizabethan front, and casement windows that looked into the
+poet’s garden. All that taste, and research, and an ardent love
+could do had been done to make Shakespeare’s house and its
+surroundings exactly what they were when Shakespeare lived.
+The wise men of Stratford had brought their offerings, in the
+shape of old pictures, and manuscripts, and relics of all kinds;
+the rooms had been restored to their original form and semblance;
+and pilgrims from afar had no longer need to blush
+for the nation which owned such a poet and held his memorials
+so lightly. A very different state of things from the vulgar
+neglect which obtained when Washington Irving visited Stratford.</p>
+
+<p>The maiden warders of the house were a little surprised at
+so late a visit, but received Daphne kindly all the same, and
+were disposed to be indulgent to girlish enthusiasm in so worthy
+a cause. It was against the rules to open the house at so late
+an hour; but as no light was needed, Daphne should be allowed
+just to creep in, and bid good-bye to the hearth beside which
+Shakespeare had played at his mother’s knees.</p>
+
+<p>‘One would think you were going away for a long while,
+Miss Lawford,’ said one of the ladies, smiling at Daphne’s eager
+face.</p>
+
+<p>It was exactly what the sexton had said, and Daphne made
+the same answer as she had given him.</p>
+
+<p>‘One never knows,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, but we know. You are coming home to be married in
+the autumn. We have heard all about it. Stratford Bells will
+ring a merry peal on that day, I should think; though I suppose
+the wedding will be at Arden Church. I am so glad you
+are going to settle in the neighbourhood, like your sister. What
+a grand place Goring Abbey is, to be sure! My sister and I
+drove over in a fly last summer to look at it. We went all over
+the house and grounds. It is a beautiful place. Yet I don’t
+know but that I like Mr. Turchill’s old manor-house best.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So do I,’ answered Daphne absently.</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course you do!’ cried the other sister, laughing. ‘That’s
+only natural.’</p>
+
+<p>They all three went across the garden in the moonlight, and
+the elder sister unlocked the house-door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you like go in alone?’ she asked. ‘You are not
+afraid of ghosts?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Of Shakespeare’s ghost? No, I should dearly love to see
+him. I would fall on my knees and worship the beautiful
+spirit.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go in, then. We’ll wait in the garden.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne went softly into the empty house. It was more
+ghostly than the church—more uncanny in its emptiness. She
+felt as if the disembodied souls of the dead were verily around
+and about her. That empty hearth, on which the moonbeams
+shone so coldly; those dusky walls; a vacant chair or two; a
+gleam of coloured light from an old scrap of stained glass.
+How cold it all felt in its dismal loneliness. She tried to conjure
+up a vision of the poet’s home three hundred years ago—in
+its old-world simplicity, its homely comfort and repose; a
+world before steam-engines, gas, and electricity; a world in
+which printing and gunpowder were almost new. To think of
+it was like going back to the childhood of this earth.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne left the outer door ajar, and crept softly through
+the rooms, half expectant of ghostly company. What tricks
+moonbeam and shadow played upon the walls, upon the solid
+old timber crossbeams, where in the unregenerate days, a quarter
+of a century ago, pilgrims used to pencil their miserable
+names upon the wood or whitewash, childishly fancying they
+were securing to themselves a kind of immortality. Daphne
+stood by the window with her heart beating feverishly, and her
+ear strained to catch the footfall of the sisters in the garden,
+and thus to be sure of human company. She looked along the
+empty street, moonlighted, peaceful; even the tavern over the
+way a place of seeming tranquillity, notable only by its glimmering
+window and red curtain. The silence and shadowiness of
+the house were beginning to frighten her in spite of her better
+reason, when a step came behind her—a firm light tread which
+her ear and heart knew too well. It seemed almost as if her
+heart stopped beating at the sound of that footfall. She stood
+like a thing of marble, scarce breathing. The step had crossed
+the threshold of the outer room, and was drawing nearer, when
+an eager voice outside broke the spell:</p>
+
+<p>‘Is she there? Have you found her?’</p>
+
+<p>It was Edgar’s voice at the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes. Where else should she be?’ answered Gerald Goring.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, my lady, I hope you are satisfied with the nice little
+dance you have led us,’ he said to Daphne as coolly as if he had
+been talking to a refractory child.</p>
+
+<p>‘You need not have troubled yourself about me,’ she answered
+curtly. ‘I told Lina I was coming for a walk. How did
+Edgar know I was here?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Edgar knew nothing,’ answered Gerald, with a light laugh
+that was something too scornful for perfect friendship. ‘Edgar
+would as soon have looked for you at Guy’s Cliff or Warwick<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</span>
+Castle, or in the moon. I knew you were nothing if not Shakespearian;
+and when I heard you had taken your boat I guessed
+you had gone to worship at your favourite shrine. We heard of
+you at the church, and hunted for you among the trees and
+tombs.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And then we went back to the landing-stage, where you
+always stop, don’t you know, when you go as far as Stratford,
+and finding you had not come back for your boat, I was almost
+in despair. But Gerald suggested Shakespeare’s birthplace, and
+here we are.’</p>
+
+<p>It was Gerald, then, who had found her; it was Gerald
+whose quick sympathy, prompt to divine her thoughts, had told
+him where she would be. Her future husband, the man to
+whom she was bound, had guessed nothing, had no faculty for
+understanding her fancies, whims, and follies. How wide apart
+must she and he remain all their lives, though nominally one!</p>
+
+<p>They all three went quietly back to the garden, where the
+sisters were waiting, amused at Daphne’s folly, and thinking it
+quite the most charming thing in girlhood; for to these vestals
+Shakespeare was a religion.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am really very sorry to have caused you so much trouble,’
+said Daphne, apologising in a general way; ‘but I had no idea
+my absence would give anyone concern. Perhaps I have been
+longer than I intended to be.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It struck ten a quarter of an hour ago,’ said Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s really dreadful; I had no idea it was so late.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne bade the sisters good-bye, apologising humbly for
+her nocturnal visit. They went to the garden-gate with her,
+and stood there watching the light slim figure till it vanished
+in the moonlight, full of interest in her prettiness and her
+fancies.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is it not a sweet face?’ asked one.</p>
+
+<p>‘And was it not a sweet idea to come and bid good-bye to
+this house before she went abroad?’ said the other.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne and her companions walked down to the landing-stage,
+talking very little by the way. Edgar and his betrothed
+side by side, Gerald walking apart with a cigar.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne wanted to row, but Edgar insisted on establishing
+her in the stern, wrapped in a shawl which he found in the boat.
+He took the sculls, and Gerald reclined in the bows, smoking
+and looking up at the night sky.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely night, all the landscape sublimated by that
+glory of moonbeam and shadow into something better and more
+beautiful than its daylight simplicity; every little creek and
+curve of the river a glimpse of fairyland; all things so radiantly
+and mysteriously lovely that Daphne almost hoped to see the
+river-god and his attendant nymphs disporting themselves in
+some reedy shallow.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘On such a night as this one would expect to see the old
+Greek gods come back to earth. I can’t help feeling sorry sometimes,
+like Alfred de Musset, that they are all dead and gone,’
+she said, looking with dreamy eyes down the moonlit tide across
+which the shadows of the willows fell so darkly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think, considering the general tenor of their conduct,
+every proper-minded young lady ought to feel very glad we
+have got rid of them,’ said Gerald, throwing away the end of
+his cigar, which fizzed and sparkled and made a little red spot
+in the moonlit water, a light that was of the earth earthy amidst
+all that heavenly radiance. ‘How would you like to be run
+away with by a wicked old man disguised as a bull; or to have
+the earth open as you were gathering daffodils, and a still
+wickeder old gentleman leap out of his chariot to carry you off
+to Tartarus?’</p>
+
+<p>‘How dare you call Zeus old?’ cried Daphne indignantly.
+‘The gods were for ever young.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, he was a family man at any rate, and ought to have
+known better than to go masquerading about the plains and
+valleys when he ought to have been sitting in state on Olympus,’
+answered Gerald. ‘Now such a river on such a night as this
+puts me in mind of old German legends rather than of Greek
+gods and goddesses. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if Miss
+Daphne Lawford were suddenly to develop into an Undine, and
+take a header into the river, cleaving the silvery tide, and going
+down to depths beyond any earthly fathom-line, leaving Turchill
+and me aghast in the boat.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have often envied Undine,’ answered Daphne; ‘I love
+the river so dearly that years ago I used really to fancy that
+there must be a bright world underneath it, where there are
+gnomes and fairies, and where one might be happy for ever.
+Even now, though I have left off believing in fairies, I cannot
+help thinking that there is profound peace at the bottom of this
+quiet river.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you were to go down experimentally in a diving-bell, I’m
+afraid you’d find only profound mud,’ said Gerald, with his
+cynical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Since his return from Canada he had treated Daphne much
+in the old fashion—as if she were a child upon whose foolishness
+his wisdom looked down from an ineffable height. There was
+nothing in manner, word, or look to show that he remembered
+that one fatal moment of self-betrayal, when his passionate heart
+gave up its secret.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder what Daphne will think of this turbid Avon
+after she has seen Lake Leman,’ he speculated presently, ‘eh,
+Turchill?’</p>
+
+<p>‘The lake is a great deal wider,’ said Edgar, with his matter-of-fact
+air; ‘and those capital steamers are a great attraction.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘A lake with steamers upon it! Too horrible!’ cried Daphne.
+‘I shall not like it half so well as my romantic Avon, though its
+waters are sometimes “drumly.” Dear old Avon!’—they were
+at the boat-house by this time, and she was stepping on shore as
+she spoke—‘how long before I shall see you again?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Less than three months,’ said Edgar, clasping her hand as
+she sprang up the steps which Bink had cut in the meadow
+bank. ‘Not quite three months; and then, darling,’ in a lower
+tone, ‘you will be all my own, and I shall be the happiest man
+on earth.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who knows?’ returned Daphne. ‘How can one be sure
+when one is leaving a place that one will ever come back to it?
+Good-bye, dear old river!’ she cried, turning to look back at it
+with eyes full of tears. ‘I feel as sad as if I were taking my last
+look at you.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘BUT I WOT BEST WHER WRINGETH ME MY SHO.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Twenty-four</span> hours after that quiet row up the moonlit
+river, the South Hill party were on the Calais steamer, tossing
+and tumbling about in the Channel, much to the discomfiture
+of Mrs. Mowser, who was a bad sailor, and took care to make
+everybody in the ladies’ cabin perfectly familiar with that fact.
+There was nothing of the Spartan about Mowser, nothing in
+any wise heroic in her conduct under the trial of sea-sickness.
+Yet there was a kind of martyrlike fidelity in her; for even in
+her agony she never let her mistress’s travelling-bag and jewel-box
+out of her eye—nay, would hardly trust those valuables out
+of her own grasp, clutching at them convulsively in the throes
+of her malady, and suspecting evil intentions in guileless fellow-sufferers.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely night, and Madoline and Daphne both stayed
+on deck, to the indignation of Mowser, who was sure Miss Lawford
+would catch cold, and declared it was all Miss Daphne’s
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you’d have come down to the cabin and had a
+comfortable lay-down,’ said Mowser when they had all scrambled
+or staggered up the oozy steps, and had been interrogated as to
+their names by an alert official, in a manner somewhat alarming
+to the sleepy and feeble-minded voyager.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a weary hour or so in the warm light refreshment-room,
+a cup of coffee, or a <em>bouillon</em>, a few stifled yawns,
+an occasional excursion to the platform, and finally the welcome
+departure, by flat fields and unknown marsh-lands, with the
+inevitable row of poplars against the horizon. Daphne seemed<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</span>
+to know the depressing landscape by heart. Her father, muffled
+in his corner, slept peacefully. Madoline slumbered, or seemed
+to slumber. Gerald and Edgar had secured a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">coupé</i> to smoke in;
+and by a judicious arrangement with the guard Sir Vernon and
+his daughters had a compartment all to themselves. But not
+one wink of sleep visited Daphne’s eyelids. Wearily she watched
+the monotonous landscape, enlivened a little now and then by
+a glimpse of village life in the clear cold light of early morning;
+cattle moving about in misty meadows, casements opening to
+the balmy air. What a long journey it seemed to that one wakeful
+passenger! but the longest—were it even a long unprofitable,
+uneventful life-journey—must end at last; and by-and-by
+there came the cry of ‘Paris!’ and the mandate that all passengers
+were to pass into the great bare luggage repository
+to answer for the contents of bags and baggage; a weary
+interval, during which the South Hill party loitered in bleak
+waiting-rooms, while Jinman and Mrs. Mowser delivered up
+keys, and satisfied the requirements of the State.</p>
+
+<p>A long day in Paris, during which Sir Vernon reposed from
+his fatigues at the Bristol Hotel, while the young people went
+about sight-seeing; a dinner at Bignon’s, where Daphne protested
+she could perceive no difference between the much-vaunted
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">consommé</i> of that establishment and Mrs. Spicer’s clear
+soup; an evening at the Français, where they saw Got in
+Mercadet; and then off again in the early summer morning by
+the eight o’clock train for Dijon and Geneva, a twelve hours’
+journey.</p>
+
+<p>It was a peerless morning. Paris, with its busy markets and
+teeming life, seemed brimming over with brightness and gaiety;
+boulevard-building in full progress; waggons coming in from
+the country; artisans hurrying, grisettes tripping to their work.
+Daphne’s spirits rose with the thought of fresh woods and pastures
+new.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have been longing all my life to see Switzerland,’ she
+said, when all the difficulties of departure were overcome, and
+the train was speeding gaily past suburban gardens, and groves,
+and bridges, ‘and now I can hardly believe I am going there.
+It is a journey to dream about and look forward to, not to come
+to pass.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are no bright things ever to come to pass? Is all life to
+be dull and colourless?’ asked Gerald Goring, sitting opposite
+her in the railway-carriage, with Lina by his side. They were
+all together to-day, having established themselves as comfortably
+as possible in the spacious compartment, and having provided
+themselves largely with light literature, wherewith to
+beguile the tedium of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know about you,’ said Daphne; ‘you are an exceptional
+person, and have been able to realise all your dreams!’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Not all,’ answered Gerald gravely: ‘I suppose no one ever
+does that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have but to form a wish, and, lo! it is gratified,’ murmured
+Daphne, taking no notice of his interruption. ‘Last
+winter it flashed across your brain that it would be nice to shoot
+cariboos—poor innocent harmless cariboos, who had never injured
+you—and, in a thought, you are off and away by seas and
+rivers and snow and ice to gratify the whim. What pleasure
+can Switzerland have for you? Every inch of it must be as
+vapidly familiar as that dear old English Warwickshire which
+you esteem so lightly.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps; but it is a pleasure to revisit a familiar place
+with those I love. I was a poor solitary waif when I went
+through Switzerland, from Geneva to Constance, from Lindau
+to Samaden, picking up my companions by the way, or travelling
+in Byronic solitude—though, by the way, I doubt if Byron
+ever was much alone. Judged by his poetry, he may be a gloomy
+and solitary spirit; but judged by his life and letters, he was a
+social soul.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I like to think of him as gloomy and alone,’ said Daphne,
+with a determined air. ‘Please don’t dispel all my illusions.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was sitting by her side, cutting up magazines and
+newspapers, watchful of her every look, thinking her every word
+delightful, ready to minister to her comfort or pleasure, but
+without much ability to entertain her with any conversational
+brightness—unless they two could have been alone, and could
+have talked of their future life at Hawksyard; the stables, the
+gardens, the horses they were to ride together next winter, when
+Daphne was to take the field, a heaven-born Diana. He was
+never tired of talking of that happy future, so near, so near, and
+to which he looked forward with such fervent hope.</p>
+
+<p>They were nearing Fontainebleau; already the forest showed
+dark on the horizon. Daphne, so vivacious hitherto, became
+curiously silent. She sat looking towards that distant line of
+wood, that smiling valley with its winding river. All her soul
+was in her eyes as she looked. Two years ago—almost day for
+day, two years—and her heart had awakened suddenly from its
+long sleep of childish innocence to feel and to suffer.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald stole a look—guiltily as it were—at the too expressive
+face. Yes, she remembered. Her soul was full of sad and
+tender memories. He could read all her secrets in those lovely
+eyes, the lips slightly parted, the lace about her neck stirred
+faintly by the throbbing of her heart. She had no more forgotten
+Fontainebleau and their meetings there than he had.
+To each it dated a crisis in life: for each it had given a new
+colour to every thought and feeling.</p>
+
+<p>Lina, her hands moving slowly in some easy knitting, looked
+up at her sister.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Are we not near Fontainebleau, where you spent your
+holidays once?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ Daphne answered shortly.</p>
+
+<p>‘You speak as if you had not been happy there.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I liked the place very much; but it was a dull life. Poor
+Miss Toby and her sick headaches, and Dibb for my only companion.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And Dibb was ineffably stupid,’ said Gerald, suddenly forgetting
+himself, and moved to laughter at the thought of honest
+Martha’s stolidity; ‘at least, I have often heard you say as
+much,’ he added hastily.</p>
+
+<p>‘She was a good harmless thing, and I won’t have her ridiculed,’
+said Daphne, brightening, all serious thoughts taking
+flight at the absurdity of Gerald’s lapse. ‘I wonder if she has
+finished that crochet counterpane.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Finished it! Of course not,’ cried Gerald. ‘She is the
+sort of girl who would die, and come to life again in a better
+world still working at the same counterpane—as I imagine from
+your description of her,’ he concluded meekly.</p>
+
+<p>They were leaving Fontainebleau far behind them by this
+time; its old church, and its palace, with all its historic memories
+of Francis and Henri, Napoleon and Pius VII. The forest
+was but a dark spot in the vanishing distance; they were speeding
+away to the rich wine country with its vast green plains,
+and steep hillsides clothed with vines. At two o’clock they
+were at Dijon, and seemed to have been travelling a week. Sir
+Vernon grumbled at the dust and heat, and regretted that he
+had undertaken the whole journey in a day.</p>
+
+<p>‘We ought to have stayed the night at Dijon,’ he said fretfully,
+when they were out of the station, steaming away towards
+Macon, after a hurried luncheon in the well-furnished refreshment-room.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a wretchedly dull place to stop at, sir,’ said Gerald;
+‘hardly anything to see.’</p>
+
+<p>‘At my age a man does not want always to be seeing things,’
+growled Sir Vernon; ‘he wants rest.’</p>
+
+<p>The day had been oppressively hot—a sultry heat, a sunbaked
+landscape. Madoline and her sister bore it with admirable
+patience, beguiling the tedium of those long hours now with
+conversation, now with books, anon with quiet contemplation
+of the landscape, which for a long way offered no striking features.
+It was growing towards evening when they entered the
+Jura region, and found themselves in a world that was really
+worth looking at: a wild strange world, as it appeared to
+Daphne’s eye; vast rolling masses of hill that seemed to have
+been thrown up in long waves before this little world assumed
+shape and solidity; precipitous green slopes, grassy walls that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</span>
+shut out the day, and the deep rapid river cleaving its tumultuous
+course through the trough of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you think this is better than Stratford-upon-Avon?’
+asked Gerald mockingly, as he watched Daphne’s excited face,
+her eyes wide with wonder.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ever so much wilder and grander. I should like to live
+here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because in such a world one would forget oneself. One’s
+own poor little troubles would seem too mean and trumpery to
+be thought about.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No man’s trouble is small or mean to the sufferer himself,’
+replied Gerald. ‘There is nothing grand or dignified in the
+abstract notion of Job’s boils; yet to him they meant an unendurable
+agony which tempted him to curse his Creator and
+destroy his own life. I don’t believe the grandest natural surroundings
+would lessen one’s sense of the thorn in one’s side.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think you have any thorns, Daphne,’ said Edgar
+tenderly, ‘or that you need take refuge from your sorrows
+among these desolate-looking mountains.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not. I was only speaking generally,’ answered
+Daphne lightly; ‘but oh! what a mighty world it is—hills that
+climb to the sky, and such lovely tranquil valleys lying between
+those dark earth walls. Vines, and water-mills, and waterfalls
+tumbling over rocky beds. If Switzerland is much grander than
+this, I think its grandeur will kill me. I can hardly breathe
+when I look up at those great dark hills.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know that there is anything in Switzerland that
+impresses one so much as one’s first view of the Jura,’ said
+Gerald. ‘It is the giant gateway of mountain-land—the entrance
+into a new world.’</p>
+
+<p>The heat seemed to increase rather than diminish with the
+shades of evening. No cool breeze sprang up with the going
+down of the sun. The sultry atmosphere thickened, and became
+almost stifling; and then, just as it was growing dark, big
+raindrops came splashing down, a roar of thunder rolled along
+the hills, like a volley of cannon; thin threads of vivid light
+trembled and zigzagged behind the hill-tops, and the storm
+which had been brooding over them all the afternoon broke
+in real earnest.</p>
+
+<p>‘A thunderstorm in the Jura,’ exclaimed Gerald; ‘what
+a lucky young woman you are, Mistress Daphne! Here is one
+of Nature’s grandest effects got up as if on purpose to give you
+pleasure.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope it may cool the air,’ said Sir Vernon, from the comfortable
+corner where he had been fitfully slumbering ever since
+they left the French territory.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne sat looking out of the window, and spoke never a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</span>
+word. She was drinking in the beauty and grandeur of this
+unspeakable region, trying to fill her soul with the form and
+manner of it. Yes, it was worth while living, were it only to
+see these mountain peaks and gorges; these hurrying waters
+and leaping torrents; these living forces of everlasting Nature.
+She had been weary of her life very often of late, so weary that
+she would gladly have flung it off her like a worn-out garment,
+and have lain down in dull contentment to take her last earthly
+rest; but to-night she was glad to be alive—to see the forked
+lightnings dancing upon the mountain-sides; to hear all earth
+shudder at the roar of the thunder; to feel herself a part of
+that grand conflict. A little later, when they had gone through
+an almost endless tunnel, and were nearing Geneva, the thunder
+grew more and more distant, seemed to travel slowly away, like
+an enemy’s cannon firing stray shots as the foe retreated; and
+the night sky flung off its black cloud-mantle, and all the stars
+shone out of a calm purple heaven; while the little lights of
+the city, faint yellow spots upon the dark blue night, trembled
+and quivered in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t this dreadfully like one’s idea of Manchester?’ said
+Daphne, when they were in the station, and tickets were being
+collected in the usual businesslike way.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can there be a higher model than Manchester for any commercial
+city?’ asked Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Commercial! Oh, I hope there is nothing commercial in
+Switzerland. I have always thought of it as a land of mountains
+and lakes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So is Scotland, yet there is such an element as trade in that
+country.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are bent on destroying my illusions. Oh, what a horrid
+row of omnibuses!’ cried Daphne, as they came out of the station
+and confronted about twenty of those vehicles, with doors
+hospitably open, and commissionaires eager to abduct new
+arrivals for their several hotels. ‘And where is Mont Blanc?’
+she inquired, looking up at the surrounding chimney-pots.</p>
+
+<p>‘At your elbow,’ answered Gerald; ‘but you may not see
+him to-night. The monarch of mountains is like our own gracious
+sovereign, and is not always visible to his subjects.’</p>
+
+<p>There was a private carriage from the Beau Rivage Hotel
+waiting for the South Hill party, and in this they all drove
+down a hilly-street, which was bright and clean, and wide, and
+prosperous-looking, but cruelly disappointing to Daphne. Jinman
+and Mowser followed in the omnibus with the luggage.
+Mowser, like Daphne, was considerably disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>‘If this is Switzerland, I call it very inferior to Brighton,’
+she said snappishly. ‘Where are the glaziers and the mountings?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Did you expect to find them just outside the station?’<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</span>
+demanded the more travelled Jinman. ‘I have lived months
+in Switzerland and never seen a glashyeer. I don’t hold with
+having one’s bones rattled to bits upon a mule for the sake of
+seeing a lot of dirty ice. One can look at that any hard winter
+on the Serpentine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Swisserland is Swisserland,’ answered Mowser sententiously,
+‘and I don’t hold with travelling all this way from
+home—I’m sure I thought this blessed day would never come
+to an end—unless we are to see somethink out of the common.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The hotels are first-class,’ said Jinman, ‘and so are the
+restorongs on board the boats. Nobody need starve in Switzerland.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Can we get a decent cup of tea?’ asked Mowser. ‘There’s
+not a scullery-maid at South Hill as would drink such cat-lap
+as they brought me at the Bristol.’</p>
+
+<p>Jinman explained that the teapot was an institution fully
+understood in the Helvetian States.</p>
+
+<p>‘They’re a more domestic people than the French,’ said
+Jinman condescendingly, ‘I must say that for them. But
+Genever is the poorest place for restorongs I was ever at;
+plenty of your caffy-staminies, where you may drink bad wine
+and smoke bad cigars to your heart’s content; but hardly a
+decent house where you can get a dejoonay à la fourchette, or
+give a little bit of dinner to a friend. The hotels have got it
+all their own way.’</p>
+
+<p>‘They ought to,’ answered Mowser, ‘when there’s such a
+many of ’em. I wonder they can all pay.’</p>
+
+<p>At the Beau Rivage, Sir Vernon and his daughters found a
+spacious suite of rooms on the third floor, many-windowed,
+balconied, looking over the lake. The two young men had
+secured quarters a little way off at the International. Sir Vernon
+grumbled at being put on the third storey, after having given
+due notice of his coming; but the American dollar and the
+Russian rouble had bought up the first and second stages of the
+big hotel, and an English country gentleman must needs be
+contented with an upper floor. But the rooms were lovely, and
+Daphne was delighted with their altitude.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are all the nearer Mont Blanc,’ she said, standing half
+in and half out of the window; ‘one of the waiters told me it
+was over there—<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">tout près</i>—but though I have been straining my
+eyes ever since, I can’t discover a gleam of snow behind those
+dark hills.’</p>
+
+<p>There were the loveliest flowers on the tables and cabinets,
+such flowers as one hardly expects to find at an hotel, were it
+never so luxurious. Madoline admired them wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘One would think the people here knew my particular vanity,
+and were anxious to gratify me,’ she said; and then turning to
+one of the waiters who was arranging books and writing-desks<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</span>
+on the tables, she asked: ‘Have you always such lovely flowers
+in the rooms?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, madame. They were ordered this morning by a telegram
+from Paris.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Father! No, Gerald; it must have been your doing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A happy thought while I was loitering about that miserable
+railway-station,’ replied Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘How good of you! Dear flowers. They make the place
+seem like home.’</p>
+
+<p>‘When you are settled at Montreux we can arrange for the
+contents of the Abbey hot-houses to be sent you weekly. It
+will be something for that pampered menial MacCloskie to look
+after, in the intervals of his cigars and metaphysical studies. I
+have an idea that he employs all his leisure in reading Dugald
+Stewart. There is a hardness about him which I can only attribute
+to a close study of abstract truth.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was standing out in the balcony, with Edgar at her
+side, looking down at the scene below. Geneva seemed pretty
+enough in this night view—a city of lake and lamplight, ringed
+round with mountains; a city of angles and bridges, sharp lines,
+lofty houses, peaked roofs; the dark bulk of a cathedral, with,
+a picturesque lantern on the roof, dominating all the rest.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think if it would only lighten I could see Mont Blanc,’
+said Daphne, with her eyes fixed upon that bit of sky to which
+the waiter had pointed when she questioned him about the
+mountain. ‘One good vivid flash would light it up beautifully.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, how dangerous!’ exclaimed Edgar; ‘pray,
+come out of the balcony. You might be blinded.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’ll risk that. It will not be the first time I have stared the
+lightning out of countenance.’</p>
+
+<p>A summer flash lit up the sky as she spoke. There was one
+wide quiver of pale blue light, but never a glimpse of snow-clad
+peak gleamed from the distance.</p>
+
+<p>‘How horrid!’ exclaimed Daphne; ‘but that was a very
+poor flash. I’ll wait for a better one.’</p>
+
+<p>She waited for half-a-dozen, in spite of Edgar’s urgent
+efforts to lure her indoors, but the summer flashes showed her
+nothing but their own vivid light.</p>
+
+<p>‘If the electric light prove no better than that for all practical
+uses, I don’t envy the inventor,’ she exclaimed with infinite
+disgust.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner was served in the adjoining room, but Madoline and
+her sister begged to be excused from dining. They would take
+tea together in the drawing-room while the three gentlemen
+dined. Sir Vernon declared that he had no appetite, but he was
+willing to sit down, for the public good as it were. After which
+protest he did ample justice to a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">sole à la Normande</i>, and a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</span>
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">poulet à la Marengo</i>, to say nothing of such pretty tiny kickshaws
+as <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">gâteau St. Honoré</i> and ice-pudding.</p>
+
+<p>For Madeline and Daphne a round table was spread with a
+snowy cloth, a pile of delicious rolls, unquestionable butter, and
+a glass dish of pale golden honey, excellent tea, and cream—a
+thoroughly Arcadian meal.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, how brightly your eyes are sparkling,’ said Lina,
+with an admiring look at the young face opposite. ‘I can see
+you are enjoying yourself.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, there is always a pleasure in novelty. Why cannot
+one pass all one’s life in new places? The world is wide enough.
+It is only our own foolishness that keeps us tied, like a poor
+tethered animal, to one dull spot.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, Daphne, I thought you were so fond of home, that
+the banks of the Warwickshire Avon made up your idea of
+earthly paradise!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Sometimes, yes. But lately I have grown terribly tired of
+Warwickshire.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That’s a bad hearing; and next year, when you are settled
+at Hawksyard——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t speak of that. Thank Heaven we are three
+days’ journey from Hawksyard. Let me forget it if I can.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, how can you talk like that of a dear old place
+which is to be your home—a place where one of the best men
+living was born?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you think him such a wonder of goodness, why did you
+not have him when he asked you?’ cried Daphne, in a sudden
+fit of irritation. Those nerves of hers, always too highly strung,
+were to-night at their sharpest tension. ‘I am sick to death
+of hearing him praised by people who don’t care a straw about
+him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’ exclaimed Lina, more grieved than offended at
+this outburst.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was on her knees beside her sister in the next
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Forgive me, darling, I am hideously cross and disagreeable.
+I suppose it is that tiresome lightning and the annoyance of not
+seeing Mont Blanc. All that long, dusty, fusty journey, and
+nothing but an hotel and a lamp-lit town at the end of it. I
+wanted to find myself in the very heart of mountains, and
+glaciers, and avalanches.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think you know how honestly I like Edgar,’ said Madoline,
+believing in her guilelessness that Daphne had resented her
+praise of Mr. Turchill because she fancied it hollow and insincere.
+‘I daresay if I had not cared for Gerald long before
+Edgar proposed to me, I might have given Mr. Turchill a
+different answer. I cannot tell how that might have been.
+My life has had only one love. I loved Gerald from the days<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</span>
+when he first came to South Hill, a school-boy, when he used to
+tell me all his troubles and his triumphs, when any success
+of his made me prouder than if it had been my own. My
+heart was given away ages before Edgar ever spoke to me of
+love.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know, dear; I can understand it all; only, don’t you
+know, when everybody conspires to praise the young man to
+whom one is engaged, and when all one’s relations are everlastingly
+congratulating one upon one’s good fortune—the implication
+being that it is quite undeserved—there is a kind of
+weariness that creeps over one’s soul at the sound of those
+familiar phrases.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I will never praise him again, dear,’ answered Lina, smiling
+at her. ‘I shall be perfectly contented to know that you value
+him as he deserves to be valued, and that your future happiness
+is assured by his devoted love.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne gave a fretful little sigh, but made no further protest.
+She was thinking that she had seen a Newfoundland dog
+every whit as devoted as Edgar. Yet the affection of that Newfoundland
+would have hardly been deemed all-sufficient for the
+happiness of a lifetime.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the table, and did execution upon the rolls
+and honey with a healthy girlish appetite, despite that feverish
+unrest which disturbed the equal balance of her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne ordered Edgar to attend her on an exploration of
+the city next morning, directly after breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>‘Madoline and my father know the place by heart,’ she said;
+‘and, of course, Mr. Goring is tired of it. How could a man
+who is weary of all creation care for Geneva?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who told you I was weary of creation?’ asked Gerald
+languidly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Your ways and your manners,’ replied Daphne. ‘I knew as
+much the first time I saw you.’</p>
+
+<p>The weather was clear and bright, the town looking its best,
+as Daphne and her lover left the hotel on their excursion. They
+were to be back before noon, at which hour they were to start
+with Gerald and Madoline for Ferney.</p>
+
+<p>‘If it were not for the lake this place would be beneath contempt,’
+said Daphne decisively, as they crossed the low level
+bridge, and lingered to look at the sapphire Rhone, and to speculate
+upon that deepened azure hue which the waters assume
+when they flow from the lake into the river. ‘It is no more
+like the Geneva of my dreams than it is like Jerusalem the
+Golden.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Is it not really?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course not. My idea of Switzerland was a succession of
+mountain ledges, varied by an occasional plank across a torrent.
+Imagine my revulsion of feeling at finding a big businesslike<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</span>
+town, with omnibuses, and cafés, and manufactories, and everything
+that is commonplace and despicable.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But, surely, I think you must have known that Geneva was
+a town,’ faltered Edgar, grieved at his dear one’s ignorance, and
+glad to think his mother was not by to compare this foolishness
+with her own precise geographical knowledge, acquired thirty
+years ago at Miss Tompion’s, and carefully harvested in the
+store-house of a methodical mind.</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, perhaps I may have expected something in the way
+of a city; a semi-circle of white peaky houses on the margin of
+the lake; a mediæval watch-tower or two; a Gothic gateway,
+the very gate that was shut against Rousseau, don’t you know;
+and Mont Blanc in full view.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I call it a very fine town,’ said Edgar, venturing to disagree
+with his beloved.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish it did not swarm so with English and Americans. I
+have heard nothing but my own tongue since I came out,’
+protested Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>She was better pleased presently when they mounted a
+narrow street on the side of a breakneck hill. She was tolerably
+satisfied with the cathedral, where the tomb of the great Protestant
+leader Henri de Rohan took her fancy by its massive
+grandeur, couchant lions at its base, the soldier in his armour
+above. She was interested in the pulpit from which Calvin and
+Theodore de Bèze preached the Reformed Faith, and was somewhat
+disgusted with her companion for his utter ignorance of
+the historic past, save inasmuch as it was feebly reflected in the
+most limited and conventional course of instruction.</p>
+
+<p>‘What did you learn at Rugby?’ she asked impatiently.
+‘You don’t seem to know anything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We didn’t give much time to history, except Livy and
+Xenophon,’ answered Edgar, feebly apologetic.</p>
+
+<p>‘And therefore you are not a bit of use as a cicerone. You
+really ought to subscribe to Mudie and read a lot of instructive
+books. There’s no good in reading old histories; people are
+always discovering letters and archives that put the whole story
+of the past in a new light. You must get your history hot from
+the press.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I would rather take my information at second-hand from
+you, dear,’ answered Edgar meekly. ‘It seems natural to
+women to read a great deal, and to find almost a second life in
+books, but men——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are so shamefully lazy that their capacity for taking in
+knowledge is exhausted by the time they have skimmed the
+daily papers,’ answered Daphne. ‘And now, please, take me to
+the museums Mr. Goring told you about.’</p>
+
+<p>With some trouble, and a good deal of inquiring, they
+found a private collection of art and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bric-à-brac</i>, historical relics,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</span>
+furniture, delft, and china, that was well worth seeing. Then,
+having regaled their eyes upon this to the uttermost, they
+scampered off to the public museum, where the only objects of
+thrilling interest were the manuscripts and letters of dead and
+gone celebrities, from Calvin downwards. They found that
+famous reformer’s penmanship as angular as his character; they
+found Bossuet a careless and sprawling writer; Fénelon careful,
+neat, and fine; the Duc de Richelieu a fop even in the use
+of his pen, his writing exquisitely clear, minute, and regular;
+while De Maintenon’s hand was large, bold, angular, and eminently
+readable—the natural indication of an unscrupulous
+managing temper, a woman born to govern, by fair means or
+foul. Daphne lingered a little over Rousseau’s manuscript of
+‘Julie,’ a work of delicate neatness, evidently copied from the
+rough draft.</p>
+
+<p>‘Is not “Julie” one of the novels which one mustn’t read?’
+asked Daphne, when she had perused half a page. ‘It looks
+uncommonly dull. I thought wicked stories were always interesting.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar had never heard of ‘Julie.’ It was doubtful if he had
+ever heard of Rousseau; but at this remark he hurried Daphne
+away from the manuscript, lest some snaky little bit of immorality
+should uncurl itself on the page, and lift up its evil
+head before her. It was time for them to get back to the hotel,
+so they gave but a cursory glance at the pictures and other treasures
+of the museum, and hastened into the glare of the broad
+white street, where Edgar insisted upon putting his betrothed
+into a fly. They found Madoline and Gerald waiting for them
+in the porch of the Beau Rivage, and a smart open carriage with
+a pair of horses ready to take them to Ferney.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank goodness we are going away from Geneva,’ said
+Daphne, as the carriage rattled through the wide clean streets
+towards the country; ‘and now I suppose we shall see something
+really Swiss.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will see the home of a great man of letters,’ answered
+Gerald, looking at her lazily with those languid dreamy eyes
+whose shifting hue had so puzzled her in the forest of Fontainebleau,
+‘and as you are such a hero-worshipper, that ought to
+satisfy you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t care a straw for Voltaire,’ said Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed! And pray how much do you know about him?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Everything. I have read Carlyle’s description of him in
+“Frederick the Great.” He was a horrid man; cringed to his
+goat-faced eminence Dubois; allowed himself to be caned by the
+Duc de Rohan’s hired bravoes, the Duc looking on out of a
+hackney coach window all the time.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say allowed himself. I don’t suppose he could help
+it.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘He ought to have prevented it. Imagine a great man
+beginning his career by being beaten in the public streets.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Who knows that your Shakespeare did not get a sound drubbing
+from Sir Thomas Lucy’s gamekeepers, before he was stung
+into retaliating by that exquisitely refined lampoon which tradition
+ascribes to him? You worship your Swan of Avon for
+what he wrote, not for what he did. Can you not deal the same
+measure to Voltaire?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know anything of his writing, except a few
+speeches out of “Zaïre,” and an epitome of his “Louis Quatorze.”
+If you are going to put him on an equality with
+Shakespeare——’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not. But I say that as an all-round literary worker
+he never had an equal, unless it were Scott, who has surpassed
+him in many things, and who could, I believe, have equalled
+him on any ground.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Scott was an old dear,’ answered Daphne, with her usual
+flippancy, ‘and I would rather have “Kenilworth” and “The
+Bride of Lammermoor” than all this Voltaire of yours ever
+wrote.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And which you, most conscientious of critics, never read.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, Daphne, what do you think of the country?’ asked
+Madoline, now that they had left the city and were driving
+slowly up hill through a pastoral district. ‘Is it not pretty?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Pretty,’ cried Daphne, ‘of course it is pretty; but it isn’t
+Swiss. What do I care for prettiness? There is enough of
+that and to spare in Warwickshire. Why,’ with ineffable disgust,
+‘the country is absolutely green!’</p>
+
+<p>‘What colour did you expect it to be?’ asked Edgar, smiling
+at her energetic displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>‘White, of course! One dazzling sweep of snow. One blinding
+world of whiteness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you want that kind of thing you had better go to the
+North Pole,’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not I. If this is Switzerland I have done with travelling.
+I daresay the North Pole is as tame as Stratford High Street.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Does not that grand Jura range frowning yonder content
+you?’ asked Gerald. ‘Is not your eye satisfied by the cloud-wrapped
+Alps on the other side of that blue lake?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; they are too far off. I want to be among them—a
+part of them. After a hypocritical waiter telling me last night
+that Mont Blanc was <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">là, tout près</i>, a truthful chambermaid confessed
+this morning that it is fourteen hours’ drive to Chamounix,
+and then one is only at the foot of the mountain. As for this
+landscape we are now travelling through——’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is uncommonly like Jersey,’ said Edgar. ‘I took my
+mother there for her holiday five summers ago. It is a capital
+place for boating and rambling about, and crossing over to the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</span>
+other islands: but the mater didn’t like it. The people weren’t
+genteel enough for her. The gowns and bonnets weren’t up to
+her mark.’</p>
+
+<p>They were at Ferney by this time, a rustic village with one
+or two humble cafés, a few small shops, a farm-yard. Here
+Daphne descried a pair of oxen drawing a waggon of hay—noble
+beasts, dappled and tawny—and the sight of these gave
+a foreign air to the scene which in some wise lessened her disgust.</p>
+
+<p>A shaded shrubberied drive admitted them to the house
+where Voltaire lived so long and so peacefully, and which is now
+in the occupation of a gentleman who graciously allows it to be
+shown—rather ungraciously—by his major-domo. Lightly as
+Daphne had spoken of Voltaire, she was too keenly imaginative
+not to be interested in the house which any famous man had
+inhabited. Two quiet rooms, <em>salon</em> and bed-chamber, looked
+into a short broad alley of trees, a garden, and summer-house
+perched high on the hillside, and commanding a wide prospect
+of fertile valley and gloomy mountain. All things in those two
+rooms were exactly as they had been in the great man’s lifetime;
+everything was exquisitely neat, and all the colours had faded
+to those delicate half-tints which the artistic soul loveth: faint
+grays and purples, fainter greens and fawn colours. Here was
+the narrow bed on which Voltaire slept, with its embroidered
+coverlet; chairs and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fauteuils</i> covered with tapestry; walls upholstered
+with figured satin damask, pale with age; Lekain’s
+portrait over the bed; Madame du Châtelet’s opposite, where
+the great satirist’s cynical glance must have rested on it as he
+awakened from his slumbers.</p>
+
+<p>They all looked reverently at these things, hushed and subdued
+by the thought that they were amidst the surroundings of
+the dead; belongings that had once been familiar and precious
+to him who now slept the last long sleep in his vault at the
+Pantheon; where never-ending gangs of Cook’s tourists are
+perpetually being ushered into his mausoleum, and perpetually
+asking one another who was Voltaire?</p>
+
+<p>They loitered a little in the garden, wrote their names in a
+visitors’-book, and then went back to explore the village, and to
+take a modest luncheon of coffee and bread and butter, sour
+claret, and Gruyère cheese at one of the humble taverns, while
+the horses stood at ease before the door, and the driver refreshed
+himself modestly at the expense of his fare.</p>
+
+<p>They drove home to the hotel by a way which passed through
+a quaint village, and then skirted the lake, and which was somewhat
+more romantic than the country road by which they had
+come, and Daphne expressed herself satisfied, on the whole, with
+her first day in Switzerland.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘FORBID A LOVE AND IT IS TEN TIMES SO WODE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir Vernon</span> showed himself especially gracious to his younger
+daughter and her lover next morning at breakfast, when the
+itinerary of their holiday was discussed. So far as his own pleasure
+was concerned, he would have liked nothing better than to
+go straight to Montreux, where a delightful villa, with a garden
+sloping to the lake, had been secured for his accommodation;
+but he did not forget that Daphne had seen nothing of Switzerland,
+and Edgar very little; and for their sakes he was ready to
+make considerable sacrifices.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am a wretched traveller, and I detest sight-seeing,’ he said
+languidly; ‘but I don’t wish to spoil other people’s pleasure.
+Suppose we make a little round before we settle down in our
+villa by the lake? Let us go to Fribourg and hear the organ,
+and then on to Berne for a day or so, and then to Interlaken.
+There I can rest quietly in my own rooms at the Jungfraublich,
+while you young people drive to Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald,
+and do any little climbing in a mild way which is compatible
+with the safety of your necks and bones generally; and
+then we can come straight back to Montreux. How would you
+like that, Madoline?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Very much, indeed, dear father. It will be a delight to me
+to go over the old ground with Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And you, Goring?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am Lina’s slave—her shadow; true as the dial to the sun.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Papa,’ said Daphne, drawing her chair nearer to him, and
+with a coaxing look which no man but a father could have resisted,
+‘it is so good of you to propose such a charming trip, and
+I shall enjoy it immensely; but would it be any way possible,
+now we are so near, to go to Chamounix, and get to the top of
+Mont Blanc; or, at least, part of the way up?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, my dear. Quite out of the question.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But it is only a drive to Chamounix; and there is a diligence
+goes every morning.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Edgar can take you there next year, when you are married.
+I am too old for a drive of fourteen hours’ duration.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked miserable. Mont Blanc was the central
+point of all her desires. It irked her to be so near and not to
+reach the world-famous mountain. She looked at Edgar doubtfully.
+No; she could not realise the idea of coming back next
+year, alone with him. She had never been able to project her
+mind into that future in which they two should be one, bound
+by a sacred yoke, doomed to be for ever together. From any
+casual glance at such a future her mind always shrank away
+shudderingly, as from the dim memory of a bad dream.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t believe I shall ever come to Switzerland again,’ she
+said discontentedly, when breakfast was finished and her father
+had retired to his own room to write letters.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline was sitting at work by an open window, silken
+water-lilies and bulrushes developing themselves gradually
+under her skilful fingers, on a ground of sage-green cloth. The
+tables were covered with books and miniature stands; the room
+was bright with flowers, and looked almost as home-like as South
+Hill; but before the evening Mowser and Jinman would have
+packed all these things, and despatched the greater part of them
+to Montreux, while the travellers went on to Fribourg in light
+marching order, which in this case meant about three portmanteaux
+per head. Some books must, of course, be taken, and
+drawing materials, and fancy-work, and a writing-desk or two,
+and camp-stools for sitting about in romantic places, and a good
+deal more, which made a formidable array of luggage by-and-by
+when Sir Vernon and his family were assembled at the
+railway-station.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mean to tell me that we require all these things for
+a week or ten days?’ he said, scowling at the patient Jinman,
+who was standing on guard over a compact pyramid of trunks,
+portmanteaux, and Gladstone bags, umbrellas, sunshades, and
+heterogeneous etceteras.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think there’s anything could have been dispensed
+with, Sir Vernon,’ answered Jinman. ‘The books and ornaments
+and most of the heavy luggage have gone on to Montrooks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Great Heaven, in the face of this would any man marry,
+and make himself responsible for feminine existences!’ exclaimed
+Sir Vernon, shrugging his shoulders disgustedly as he
+turned away; yet Jinman could have informed him that his
+own share of the luggage was quite equal to that of his daughters.</p>
+
+<p>They were all established presently in a German railway
+compartment: Sir Vernon seated in his corner and absorbed
+in an English newspaper, whose ample sheet excluded every
+glimpse of lake and wooded slopes, Alps and Jura; while
+Edgar smoked on the platform outside, and Daphne stood at
+the open door, gazing at the changing landscape: the smiling
+lake below; the dark slopes and mountain range on the farther
+shore; the villages nestling in the valley on this nearer bank;
+the cosy little homesteads and bright gardens; the vine-clad
+terraces, divided by low gray walls; the quaint old churches,
+with tiled roofs and square clock-towers; and yonder, far away
+at the end of the lake, Chillon’s gloomy fortress, which she
+recognised with a cry of delight, having seen its presentment in
+engravings and photographs, and knowing Byron’s poem by
+heart.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</span></p>
+
+<p>She gave a sigh of regret as a curve of the line carried her
+away from the azure lake and its panorama of hills.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can hardly bear to leave it,’ she said; ‘but, thank Heaven,
+we are coming back to it soon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are reconciled to Switzerland, then, in spite of your
+disillusions,’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘Reconciled! I should like to live and die here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What! abandon your beloved Shakespeare’s country?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am heartily sick of Shakespeare’s country.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ cried Edgar, with a look of deepest mortification,
+‘that is a bad look-out for poor old Hawksyard.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hawksyard is a dear old place, but I don’t want to be reminded
+of it—or of anything else in Warwickshire—now I am
+in Switzerland. I want to soar, if I can. I am in Byron’s
+country. He lived there,’ pointing downwards to where they
+had left Lausanne and Ouchy. ‘He wrote some of his loveliest
+poetry there; his genius is for ever associated with these scenes.
+Sad, unsatisfied spirit!’</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes filled with sudden tears at the thought of that disappointed
+life, seeking solace from all that is loveliest in Nature,
+shunning the beaten tracks, yet never finding peace.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you are very good,’ said Gerald gravely, ‘within the next
+ten minutes I will show you something you are anxious to see.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What is that?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mont Blanc. Get your glass ready.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, we left him behind us, across the lake, sulkily veiled
+in impenetrable cloud.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He will show himself more amiable presently. You will
+get a good view of him in five minutes if you focus your glass
+properly and don’t chatter.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne spoke never a word, but stood motionless, with her
+landscape glass glued to her eyes, and waited, as for a divine
+revelation.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, yonder it arose, white and cloudlike on the edge of the
+blue summer sky, the mighty snow-clad range, of which Mont
+Blanc is but a detail—the grand inaccessible region; mountain-top
+beyond mountain-top; peak above peak; everlasting, untrodden
+hills, producing nothing, pasturing nothing, stupendous
+and ghastly as the polar seas; a world apart from all other
+worlds; a spectacle to awe the dullest soul and thrill the coldest
+heart; a revelation of Nature’s Titanic beauty.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, it must have been such mountains as those that the
+Titans hurled about them when they fought with Zeus,’ cried
+Daphne when she had gazed and gazed till the last gleam of
+those white crests vanished in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you feel better?’ asked Gerald, with his mocking smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘I feel as if I had seen the world that we are to know after
+death,’ answered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Would you be surprised to hear that these excrescences,
+which you think so grand, are but modern incidents in the
+history of the earth? Time was when Switzerland was one
+vast ice-field: nay, if we can believe Lyell, the clay of London
+was in course of accumulation as marine mud at a time when
+the ocean still rolled its waves over the space now occupied by
+some of the loftiest Alpine summits.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t be instructive,’ exclaimed Daphne. ‘I want
+to know nothing about them, except that they are there, and
+that they are beautiful.’</p>
+
+<p>At Fribourg they drove down the narrow street to the Zähringer
+Hof, the hotel by the suspension bridge, where from a
+balcony they looked down a sheer descent to the river, and to
+the roofs and chimneys of the old town lying in a cleft of
+the hills, while yonder, suspended in mid-air, a mere spider-thread
+across the sky, stretched the upper and loftier bridge.
+It was nearly dinner-time when they arrived. There were dark
+clouds on the horizon, and only gleams of watery sunshine
+behind the gray old watch-towers on the crest of the hill across
+the river.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid we are going to have another storm,’ said Gerald,
+lounging against the embrasure of a window, and looking as if
+Fribourg, with its modern suspension bridges and mediæval
+watch-towers, were just the most uninteresting place in the world.</p>
+
+<p>He looked thoroughly worn-out and weary, as if he had
+been labouring hard with body and mind all day, instead of
+lolling in a railway-carriage, staring listlessly at the landscape.
+Sir Vernon, the ostensible invalid, was not more languid.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let it come down,’ cried Daphne; ‘but whatever the weather
+may be, I shall go and hear the organ after dinner. There is
+the bell for vespers. How nice it is to find oneself in a Roman
+Catholic town, with vesper-bells ringing, and dear old priests and
+nuns and all sorts of picturesque creatures walking about the
+streets!’</p>
+
+<p>They dined in their own sitting-room, Sir Vernon having a
+good old English dislike to any intercourse with unintroduced
+fellow-creatures. To sit at a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table-d’hôte</i> with the Tom, Dick,
+and Harry of cockney Switzerland would have been abhorrent
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘We may get a worse dinner in our own room,’ he said, looking
+doubtfully at some unknown spoon-food offered to him by
+way of an <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">entrée</i>, ‘but we avoid rubbing shoulders with the
+kind of people who travel nowadays.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are they so much worse than the people who used to
+travel——’</p>
+
+<p>‘When I was a young man? Yes, Daphne, quite a different
+race,’ said Sir Vernon with authority. ‘Gerald was right.
+We are in for another storm.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</span></p>
+
+<p>A quiver of livid light, a crash of thunder, and black darkness
+yonder behind the hills gave emphasis to his statement.
+Daphne flew to the window to look at the bridges and the
+towers, which were almost expunged from the face of creation
+by a thick blinding rain. A waggon was crawling across the
+nearer and lower bridge, and the whole fabric rocked under its
+weight.</p>
+
+<p>‘Nobody will dream of going to the cathedral to-night,’
+said Sir Vernon.</p>
+
+<p>But the waiter in attendance declared that everyone would
+go. There would be a concert on the great organ from eight to
+nine. The cathedral was close by; there would be a carriage
+in waiting at ten minutes to eight to convey those guests who
+graciously deigned to patronise the concert, for which the
+waiter was privileged to dispose of tickets. Furthermore, the
+storm would assuredly abate before long. It was but a thunder-shower.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne stood at the window watching the thunder-shower,
+which seemed to be drowning the lower town and flooding the
+river. The rain came down in torrents; the thunder roared
+and bellowed over the hills; the chainwork of the suspension
+bridge creaked and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon protested that the storm made him nervous, and
+retired to his room, leaving the young people to do as they
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>They sat in the stormy dusk sipping their coffee, ready to
+put on their hats and be off the minute the carriage was
+announced. Daphne wore a gown of some creamy-white material,
+which gave her a ghostly look in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have heard this famous organ, Lina,’ she said. ‘Is it
+really worth stopping at Fribourg on purpose to hear it when,
+with a little more time and trouble, one might get half-way up
+Mont Blanc?’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a wonderful organ; but you will be able to judge for
+yourself in a few minutes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘We should have been getting near Chamounix by this
+time, if we had started by this morning’s diligence,’ sighed
+Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘Restless, unsatisfied soul! still harping on the mountain,’
+said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have seen him, at least,’ exclaimed Daphne, clasping her
+hands; ‘that is something. Far, far away, like a glimpse of
+another world: but still I have seen him. Shall we see him
+again to-morrow, do you think, on the way to Interlaken?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid not. To-morrow I shall have the honour to
+introduce you to the Jungfrau.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don t care a straw for her,’ exclaimed Daphne contemptuously.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘What, not for Manfred’s mountain? Can you, who have
+so devoured your Byron, be indifferent to the background of
+that gloomy individual’s existence?’</p>
+
+<p>‘There is an interest in that, certainly; but Mont Blanc is
+my beau-ideal of a mountain.’</p>
+
+<p>Here the carriage was announced. The two girls put on
+their hats and wraps, soft China crape and gray camel’s-hair
+shawls, and hurried down to the hall. The rain was still falling,
+the thunder still grumbling amidst distant hills. They crowded
+into the fly, and were jolted over stony and uneven ways to the
+cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>They went in at a narrow little door to a great dark church,
+with solitary lamps dotted about here and there in the gloom.
+Everything had a mysterious look; the richly-carved oak, the
+shrines, the chapels, the shrouded altar far away at the end.</p>
+
+<p>There were, perhaps, a hundred people sitting about in high
+narrow pews with massive carved oak seats, sitting here and
+there in a scattered way, all wrapped in shadow and gloom,
+silent, overawed, expectant.</p>
+
+<p>Madoline and Daphne walked side by side up the long nave,
+between two lines of oaken seats, the two men following; then
+midway between the organ and the altar, they went into one of
+the pews—Lina first, then Daphne. She had been sitting there
+a minute or so looking about the dim dark church before she
+discovered that it was Gerald, and not Edgar, who sat by her
+side. Edgar had taken the seat behind them.</p>
+
+<p>They sat there for five or ten minutes, hushed and listening;
+the rain splashing on the roof, the distant thunder reverberating;
+nothing to be seen in the vast building but those yellow
+lamps gleaming here and there, and patching with faint light
+an isolated statue, or a pulpit, or a clustered column.</p>
+
+<p>At last, when the silence, broken only by faintest whisperings
+among the expectant audience, had endured for what
+seemed a weary while, the organ pealed forth in a grand burst
+of sound, which swept along the arched roof, and filled the
+church with music. Then after that crash of mighty chords
+came tenderest phrases, a flowing melody that sank low as a
+whisper, and then that strain of almost supernatural likeness
+to the human voice rose up above the legato arpeggios of the
+accompaniment, and thrilled every ear—tender, angelic, a
+divine whisper of love and melancholy. Daphne had risen from
+her seat, and stood with her arms resting upon the massive
+woodwork in front of her, gazing up through the darkness
+towards that glimmering spot of light yonder, near the arch of
+the roof, which showed where the organ was, far away,
+mysterious.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, that heavenly voice, with its soul-moving sadness! A
+rush of tears streamed from her eyes; she stretched out her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</span>
+hands unconsciously, as if yearning for some human touch to
+break the mournful spell of that divine sorrow, and the hand
+nearest Gerald was clasped in the darkness; clasped by a warm
+strong hand which held it and kept it—kept it without a
+struggle, for, alas! it lay unresistingly in his. They drew a little
+nearer to each other involuntarily, shudderingly happy—with
+the deep sense of an unpardonable guilt, a shameful treason;
+yet forgetting everything except that vain foolish love against
+which both had fought long and valiantly.</p>
+
+<p>A peal of thunder on the organ within, an answering peal
+from the storm without. The mimic tempest blended itself
+with heaven’s own artillery; and at the terrible sound those
+guilty creatures in the church let go each other’s hands. Daphne
+clasped hers before her face, and sank on her knees.</p>
+
+<p>‘Pity me and help me, O God!’ she prayed, and looking up
+she saw just above her in a marble niche the image of the
+Mother of God; and in this moment of temptation and self-abandonment,
+it seemed to her a natural thing that women
+should ask a woman’s mediation in their hour of sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>A funeral hymn of Sebastian Bach’s pealed from the organ
+with an awful grandeur which thrilled every listener; and then
+came a silence, and after that the low murmur of the storm
+dying away in the distance, from the overture to ‘William Tell,’
+the flutelike tones of the ‘<em>Ranz des Vaches</em>,’ telling of pastoral
+valleys and solemn mountains, a life of Arcadian innocence and
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>With those lighter, gayer strains the concert ended, and they
+all went slowly and silently out of the church. The storm was
+over, and the moon was breaking through dark clouds.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t let us go back in that jingling abomination of a fly,’
+said Gerald, striding on over the wet pavement, leaving the two
+girls to follow with Edgar Turchill.</p>
+
+<p>They picked their way through the streets. The town was
+all dark and quiet, save for a glimmering yellow candle here and
+there under a gable; there was none of the brightness and out-of-door
+life of a French town. A couple of omnibuses and a fly
+or two carried off the people who had been in the cathedral to
+their several hotels.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring was waiting for them in front of the Zähringer.</p>
+
+<p>‘What made you hurry on so?’ asked Madoline wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did I hurry? I think it was you others who crawled.
+That music irritated my nerves a little. It is full of studied
+effects; the organist has trained himself to play upon the emotions
+of his audience, now soaring to the seraph choir, now
+going down to the depths of Pandemonium. The thunderstorm
+and the organ together would have been too much for anybody.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</span>
+Oh, pray don’t go indoors yet,’ he exclaimed, as they were all
+three moving towards the entrance of the hotel. ‘Let us go for
+a walk on the bridge. Don’t you know that after the organ the
+great feature of Fribourg is the bridge?’</p>
+
+<p>‘If we are to be on our way to Interlaken to-morrow, we had
+better see all we can to-night,’ said the practical Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>They went on the bridge; Gerald still walking ahead, and
+keeping in some wise aloof from them. Daphne had not spoken
+since they left the cathedral.</p>
+
+<p>‘Had the music an unpleasant effect upon you too, dear, that
+you are so silent?’ Madoline asked, as they two walked side by
+side.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was only too beautiful,’ answered Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘And you are glad we came here.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No. Yes. I would rather have been half-way up Mont
+Blanc.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor child! But that is a pleasure in reserve for another
+holiday. I know Edgar will take you wherever you like to go.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think so? What a dance I shall lead him!’ cried
+Daphne with a mocking laugh. ‘I shall not be content with
+Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. I shall insist upon seeing all
+the extinct volcanoes, the wonderful fiery mountains that have
+burned themselves out. Cotopaxi is about the mildest hill he
+will be invited to climb.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Turchill had dropped into the background, and was
+quietly enjoying his cigar, unaware of the pleasures in store for
+him. Gerald walked ever so far ahead, cigarless, a gloomy
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid either the thunder or the organ has given Gerald
+one of his nervous headaches,’ said Lina anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>The moon showed herself fitfully athwart hurrying clouds,
+now lighting up hills and watch-towers, river and rugged ravine,
+with a wild Salvator-Rosa-esque effect, now hidden altogether,
+and leaving all in gloom. Midway upon the bridge Madoline
+and Daphne stopped, and stood looking down into the hollow
+below, where the quiet sleeping town was dimly visible, with its
+quaint street lamps, and rare gleams of light from narrow casements,
+and stony ways shining after the rain. Here, when they
+had stood for some minutes, Edgar joined them, having finished
+his cigar, and he and Madoline began to talk about the place;
+he questioning, she expounding its features.</p>
+
+<p>While they two were talking, Gerald came slowly back, and
+stood by Daphne’s side, a few paces apart from the others. She
+said never a word. They stood side by side for some minutes
+like statues. She was wondering if he could hear the passionate
+throbbing of her heart, which would not be stilled.</p>
+
+<p>They were standing thus, as if bound by a spell, when a
+heavy waggon came creeping slowly along the bridge, making<span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</span>
+the spot on which they stood tremble and sway under their
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are hanging by a thread between time and eternity,’
+said Gerald, drawing closer to her. ‘What if the thread were
+to snap, and drop us, hand in hand, into the black gulf of death?’</p>
+
+<p>She did not shudder at the thought, but turned and looked
+at him in the moonlight, with a strange sad smile.</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you be glad?’ he asked softly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ she answered, between a sigh and a whisper, still
+looking up at him with that pathetic smile; and his eyes looked
+fondly down into hers, losing themselves in the depth of a
+fathomless mystery.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know that this bridge is the second longest in the
+world, three hundred yards long, and a hundred and sixty-eight
+feet above the river?’ asked Edgar Turchill’s matter-of-fact
+tones, as he walked towards them, cheerful, contented, pleased
+with himself and all the world.</p>
+
+<p>‘For God’s sake spare us a gush of second-hand Baedeker,’
+cried Gerald with intense irritation. ‘As if any living soul,
+except a Cook’s tourist, could care how many feet or how many
+yards long a bridge is. It is the effect one values, the general
+idea that one is on that very bridge of Al Sirât, laid over the
+midst of hell, and finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge
+of a sword, over which the righteous must pass to Mahomet’s
+paradise. It is the notion of man’s audacity in making perilous
+ways that is really delightful. When that waggon went across
+just now, I thought the last straw was being laid, and we were
+all going.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar came round to Daphne with a calm air of proprietorship
+which made her shudder.</p>
+
+<p>‘What an interesting evening we have had!’ he said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Very.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You look pale and tired. Has it all been too much for
+you?’ he asked tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think that organ would be too much for anyone.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know—I am no judge, and you mustn’t laugh at
+me for expressing an opinion—I hardly thought it equal, as an
+organ, to the one at St. Paul’s. I took my mother there once
+when all the charity children were assembled. I can’t tell you
+what a grand sight it was, the dome crowded with their fresh
+young faces.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, for pity’s sake don’t talk about it,’ cried Daphne,
+almost hysterically. ‘To compare that dark solemn cathedral,
+with just a few people dotted about among the shadows, and the
+thunder pealing over the roof—to compare such a scene with
+that pagan St. Paul’s, and the dome crowded with rosy-cheeked
+children, all white caps and pinafores and yellow worsted stockings!’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I was talking of the organ,’ replied Edgar, somewhat
+offended.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then why introduce the charity children? Oh, please let
+my thoughts dwell upon that dark church to-night; let me
+remember the music, the darkness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, dearest one, you are crying,’ exclaimed Edgar,
+startled at the sound of a stifled sob.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who would not cry at such music?’</p>
+
+<p>‘But so long after. You are nervous and hysterical.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am only tired. Please don’t worry me,’ retorted Daphne
+fretfully, wrapping herself tightly in her soft gray shawl, and
+quickening her pace.</p>
+
+<p>She said not a word more till they were inside the Zähringer
+Hof, when she wished the other three a brief good-night, declaring
+herself utterly worn out, and tripped lightly upstairs to her
+room on the second storey. Madoline’s room was next her sister’s,
+and when she went up a few minutes later, and knocked at
+the door of communication between the two rooms, Daphne
+excused herself from opening it.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m dreadfully sleepy, dear,’ she said; ‘please leave me alone
+for to-night!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Willingly, dearest, if you are sure you are not ill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not the least in the world.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And there is nothing you want Mowser to do for you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nothing. She has unpacked my things. I have everything
+I want.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then good-night, and God bless you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-night,’ answered Daphne, but invoked no blessing
+upon the sister she loved so well. Prayer breathed from such a
+guilty heart would be almost blasphemy.</p>
+
+<p>She walked up and down the room for a long time, up and
+down, up and down, her soul filled with ineffable joy. Yes; guilty,
+treacherous, vile, ungrateful as she knew herself to be, she could
+not stifle that wild sense of happiness, the rapture of knowing
+herself beloved by the man she loved. Nothing but evil could ever
+come out of that love; nothing but struggle, and sorrow, and
+pain; yet it was deep delight to have been loved, the one perfect
+joy that was possible for her upon this earth. To have
+missed it would have been never to have lived: and now death
+might come when it would. She had lived her life; she had had
+her day.</p>
+
+<p>That this love was a thing of guilt, a scorpion to be crushed
+and trodden under her foot, she never questioned. Not for an
+instant did it enter into her mind that she could profit by
+Gerald Goring’s inconstancy, that she was to take to herself the
+lover whose faith had been violated by to-night’s revelation.
+Never did it occur to her that any alteration in his future or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</span>
+hers was involved in the admissions which each had made to the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>‘He knows that I love him; he knows how weak and vile I
+am,’ she said to herself. ‘If Lina were to know too? If she
+were to see me with the mask off my face, what a monster of
+perfidy and ingratitude I should seem to her! Oh, I should die
+of shame. I could never endure the discovery. And to make
+her unhappy—her to whom I owe so much, my dearest, my
+best, the guardian angel of my life. Oh, Lina, Lina, if you
+knew!’</p>
+
+<p>She flung herself on her knees beside the bed, and, with
+hands clasped above her head, breathed her passionate prayer:</p>
+
+<p>‘Let me die to-night. Oh, Thou who knowest how sinful
+and weak I am, let me die to-night!’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘I MAY NOT DON AS EVERY PLOUGHMAN MAY.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">A chambermaid</span> brought Daphne a letter at half-past six
+o’clock next morning. She had fallen asleep in the summer sunlight
+after a night of almost utter sleeplessness; the warm air
+blowing in upon her across the hills on the opposite side of the
+river; the noises of the early awakened town floating up from
+the valley below.</p>
+
+<p>She started from her pillow, scared and agitated at the sound
+of the chambermaid’s knock, and took the letter with a trembling
+hand. Gerald’s writing! She knew it too well; yet this was
+the first letter he had ever addressed to her.</p>
+
+<p>‘How dare he write to me?’ she exclaimed angrily, as she
+tore open the envelope.</p>
+
+<p>The letter began with no fond words of endearment. The
+writer dashed at his meaning with passionate directness, with
+feeling too intense to be eloquent.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>‘Tell me what I am to do. After last night, my future, my
+life, are in your hands. Both belong to you if you will have
+them. Shall I break the truth to Lina? Shall I tell her how,
+little by little, in spite of myself, my heart has been beguiled
+away from that calm affection which was once all-sufficient for
+the joy of life; how a new and passionate love has replaced the
+old; and that, although I shall honour, respect, and admire her
+as the first and best of women till the end of my days, I am no
+longer, I never can be again, her lover? I think, Daphne, that
+the hard, outspoken, brutal truth may be the wisest and best.
+Let us look Fate in the face. Neither you nor I can ever be
+happy asunder. Will the sacrifice of my happiness secure Lina’s?<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</span>
+Answer me from your heart of hearts, my beloved, as you answered
+me on the bridge last night.’</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>There was not an instant’s doubt in Daphne’s mind as to how
+this letter must be answered. Lina’s happiness sacrificed to
+hers! Lina, so good, so pure-minded, in all things so much
+above her, to be made miserable, in order that she might triumph
+in a successful treachery!</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think the most virtuous person in the world could
+loathe me worse than I should loathe myself, if I were to do this
+thing,’ she said to herself resolutely.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down by the open window, wrapped in her loose
+white dressing-gown, her soft golden hair falling over her shoulders
+like a veil, her cheeks pale, her eyes heavy, an image of
+youthful sorrow.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>‘Not for this wide world,’ she wrote, answering Gerald Goring’s
+question as directly as he had asked it, ‘not to be completely
+and unspeakably happy would I rob my sister of her
+happiness; not if it could be done without making me a monster
+of ingratitude, the most treacherous and despicable of women.
+All you and I have to do is to forget our folly of last night, and
+to be true, each of us, to the promises we have made. You
+would be, indeed, a loser, condemned to pay a life-long penalty
+for your foolishness, if you could barter such a flower as Madoline
+for such a weed as me. Be true to her, and you will find
+your reward in that truth. Do you know how good she is; how
+priceless in her purity and love; and could you let her go for
+my sake—for a creature who is compounded of faults and inconsistencies,
+caprices, self-will; a creature with no more soul than
+Undine? Remember how long she has loved you; think how
+much she is above you in the beauty of her character; how fitted
+she is to make your home happy, your life nobler and better
+than it could ever be without her. Why, if, in some moment of
+madness, you were to surrender her love, your life to come would
+be one long regret for having lost her. Forget, as I shall forget;
+be true, as I will be true, heaven helping me; and let me write
+myself, without a blush, in this my first, and, perhaps, my last
+letter to you,—Your Sister,</p>
+
+<p class="right">
+<span class="smcap">Daphne</span>.’<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Her eyes were streaming with tears as she wrote. Every
+word came from her heart. There was no duplicity of thought,
+no lurking hope that Gerald might refuse to be ruled by her.
+She wrote to him faithfully, honestly, resolutely, her heart and
+mind exalted by her intense love of her sister. And when the
+letter was sealed and given to the chambermaid—who must have
+wondered a little at this outbreak of letter-writing before breakfast
+as a new development in the British tourist—she stole softly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</span>
+to the door leading into Madoline’s room and opened it as noiselessly
+as she could.</p>
+
+<p>Lina was still asleep, the calm beautiful face turned towards
+the sunlight, the long dark lashes dropping on the oval cheek,
+the lips faintly parted. Daphne crept to the bed-side and sat
+down beside her sister’s pillow. Lina awoke and looked up at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>‘My pet, have you been here long? Is it late?’ she asked.</p>
+
+<p>‘Late for you, love. About half-past seven. I have only
+this moment come in.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How white and haggard you look!’ said Lina anxiously.
+‘Have you had a bad night?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I did not sleep particularly well. I seldom can in a strange
+place.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, I am afraid you are ill—or unhappy. There was
+something in your manner last night that alarmed me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not ill: and I have not felt so happy for a long time
+as I feel this morning.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, dearest?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I have been making good resolutions, and I mean
+to act upon them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Would it be too much to ask what they are?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, a general determination to be very obedient to you,
+and very respectful to my father, and very tolerant of Edgar’s
+stupidities, and all that kind of thing, don’t you know?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My darling, I can’t bear to hear you talk of Edgar like that.
+He is so thoroughly good.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes,’ sighed Daphne, with an air of resignation. ‘If there
+were only a little rift in his goodness, I should get on with him
+so much better. It is dreadful to have to deal with a man
+whose excellence is always putting one to shame.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think you could be easily worthy of him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No, I couldn’t. And if I could I wouldn’t. And now
+I must run away and dress, for I want to explore those hills
+across the river before breakfast.’</p>
+
+<p>She looked bright and fresh and full of youthful energy an
+hour afterwards, when she went down to the sitting-room,
+where Edgar was loafing about wearily, longing for her to
+appear. Her neat tailor gown of darkest olive cashmere, and
+coquettish little olive-green toque, set off the pearly tints of her
+complexion and the brightness of her loosely-coiled hair. She
+came into the room buttoning a long Swedish glove, the turned-back
+sleeve showing the round white arm.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a fetching get-up,’ said Edgar, who was apt to embellish
+his speech with those flowers of slang which are in everybody’s
+mouth; ‘but what is the use of those long gloves tucked
+away under the sleeve of your gown?’</p>
+
+<p>‘No use,’ answered Daphne; ‘but they’re fashionable. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</span>
+want you to come and ramble on that hill over there before
+breakfast. Do you mind?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mind!’ cried Edgar. ‘You know I am always delighted to
+walk with you. But, I say, Daphne, what was the matter with
+you last night? You were so cross.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know I was; but I am never going to be cross again. I
+am going to turn over a new leaf. I have been wild and
+wilful, but I am not wilful now.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are always the dearest and best of girls,’ answered
+Edgar fatuously.</p>
+
+<p>They passed Gerald Goring on the stairs. Daphne gave him
+a friendly nod, just the easiest salutation possible; but her
+cheek paled as she went by, and her reply to Edgar’s next observation
+was somewhat wide of the mark.</p>
+
+<p>He talked Baedeker to her as they went across the bridge;
+and he talked Baedeker about the watch-towers; and still again
+Baedeker when, in the course of their wanderings, they came to
+a chapel on a height, from whence there was a lovely view,
+exquisitely beautiful in the clear calm summer morning. They
+roamed about together till it was time to go back to the ten o’clock
+breakfast, by which hour Sir Vernon had resigned himself
+to the ordeal of facing his family.</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast there came more sight-seeing, Sir Vernon
+having decided upon going on to Berne by a late afternoon
+train. So they all set out together in a roomy landau to explore
+the town and neighbourhood. They went into the
+arsenal, where a funny old man in a blue blouse showed them
+ancient and modern gunnery. They saw the venerable lime-tree
+which stands in front of the Town Hall and the Rathhaus,
+propped up with wood and stone; a tree which, according to
+tradition, was originally a twig borne by a young native of Fribourg
+when he arrived in the town, breathless from loss of blood,
+to bring the news of the victory of Morat. ‘Victory!’ he
+gasped, and died.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald, more than usually cynical this morning, declined to
+believe in either the twig or the heroic messenger.</p>
+
+<p>‘I always shut my mind against all these romantic stories
+upon principle,’ he said languidly. ‘The outcome of all modern
+research—Mr. Brewer, and all the rest of it—is to prove that
+none of these delightful traditions has a germ of truth in it. It
+saves a great deal of trouble to begin by disbelieving them.’</p>
+
+<p>They went about the town in rather a dawdling desultory
+way, looking at the fronts of old houses, at the queer little shops,
+and finally paused before the church of St. Nicholas, which they
+had seen so dimly last night. Edgar insisted upon going in,
+but Daphne would go no farther than the doorway, where
+she looked respectfully at the bas-reliefs which she was told to
+admire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I saw quite enough of it last night,’ she said, when Edgar
+urged her to go in and explore the interior.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, Daphne, it was too dark for you to see anything.’</p>
+
+<p>‘All churches are alike,’ she answered impatiently. ‘Please
+don’t worry.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon, who happened to be within earshot, looked at
+his daughter curiously, wondering at this development of
+modern manners. Could a pearly delicacy of complexion,
+luminous eyes of that dark gray which is almost violet, and
+bright gold hair, quite make amends for this utter want of
+courtesy? But Edgar appeared perfectly content to be so
+treated; and it was Edgar who was most concerned in the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>They dawdled away a long morning seeing the town and
+driving about the somewhat pastoral landscape which surrounds
+it, lunched late, and started at five o’clock for Berne, where
+they arrived at the Berner Hof in time for a late dinner.
+Daphne grumbled a little on the way, protesting against the
+landscape between Fribourg and Berne as a relapse into English
+pastoral scenery.</p>
+
+<p>‘What do I want with meadows, and orchards, and cottages?’
+she exclaimed. ‘I can see those in England. If it
+were not for the cows living on the ground-floor, and the fodder
+being carried up to the roof by those queer slanting covered
+ways, there wouldn’t be a shade of difference between the
+houses here and those at home, except that these are ever so
+much dirtier.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You ought to have come a few million years ago, when
+Switzerland was a glacial chaos,’ said Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>The Berner Hof pleased Sir Vernon by its spaciousness and
+air of English comfort, but it impressed Daphne as an hotel
+which would have been more in keeping with Liverpool or
+Manchester.</p>
+
+<p>‘I had quite made up my mind that in Switzerland we should
+stop at wooden <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i> perched upon mountain ledges, with an
+impending avalanche always in view, and the “<em>Ranz des Vaches</em>”
+sounding in the distance all day long.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There are such hostelries,’ answered Gerald; ‘but I think,
+if you found yourself at one of them, you would be rather
+inclined to wish yourself at the Berner Hof, or the Beau
+Rivage.’</p>
+
+<p>Next day was the first Tuesday in the month, and the occasion
+of the monthly market, a grand assemblage of small dealers
+from the adjacent country.</p>
+
+<p>They all went out directly after breakfast, and proceeded
+straight to the noble central street, a mile in length, which
+under various names pierces the town in a straight unbroken
+line from one end to the other. Very old and quaint are the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</span>
+houses in this long street, many of them built over arcades,
+under which the foot-passengers walk, and within whose arches
+the market-people set out their stalls. The drapery stalls,
+gay with many-coloured handkerchiefs fluttering in the summer
+air; the jewellers’ stalls, all twinkling and flashing with
+that silver trinketry which is a national institution, chains of
+endless length, necklaces, earrings, bracelets, glittering in the
+sun; stalls loaded with fruits and vegetables; stalls of gaudy-coloured
+pottery, jugs and jars of queerest, quaintest shapes;
+and up and down the stony street cows and oxen being led
+perpetually, meek, submissive, gentle, beautiful, in an endless
+procession; while every here and there under a countryman’s
+cart the patient dogs of burden lay at rest, placid but watchful,
+faithful guardians of the master’s property. It was a scene of
+picturesque and national life which pleased Daphne immensely.
+She had never seen such a market before, never seen so long a
+street, except the monotonous length of a Parisian boulevard
+as she was being jolted along in a fly from station to station.
+Here she saw the people in their national costume. Here
+Switzerland seemed really Swiss.</p>
+
+<p>She flew from stall to stall, admiring, selecting, bargaining,
+wanting to buy a barrowful of red and orange pots and
+pans.</p>
+
+<p>‘They would look so lovely in the corridor at South Hill, on
+high brackets,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid the brackets would have to be very high,’
+answered Lina, smiling at her.</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose you mean that for a sneer,’ retorted Daphne,
+‘but if Mr. Burne Jones, or Mr. Rosetti, or Mr. Morris were
+to say those pots and pans were the right thing, there would
+be an eruption of them over the walls of every fashionable
+room in England. I consider them positively lovely. And as
+for the silver chains, I shall never live without one round my
+neck.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Come and make your selection,’ said Edgar, pointing to
+one of the biggest and grandest stalls in the open place near
+the famous clock-tower, where the cock was to crow, and the
+figure of grim old Time was to turn his glass, and all manner
+of wonderful things were to happen just before the striking of
+the hour. This stall showed the best array of silver trinketry
+which they had seen yet, and the country people were clustered
+about it, gazing at the bright new silver, and a good deal at
+golden-haired Daphne in her creamy Indian silk gown, a radiant
+figure under a creamy silk umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>‘Choose the prettiest, Daphne, and wear it for my sake,’ said
+Edgar, with his portly leather purse in his hand, an English
+pigeon offering himself up to be plucked.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">Combien?</i>’ he asked, rather proud of his readiness with a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</span>
+foreign language, pointing to the handsomest of the chains, a
+duster of many slender chainlets, about three yards long.</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="de" xml:lang="de">Wie viel?</i>’ asked Daphne, with a compassionate glance at
+her affianced.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is ver sheep,’ answered the vendor, showing a disgusting
+familiarity with the English tongue. ‘Gut und sheep, sehr
+schön, ver prurty, funf pound Englees.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Five pounds!’ screamed Daphne: ‘why, I thought it would
+be about five shillings! Pray come away, Mr. Turchill. They
+see we are English.’</p>
+
+<p>She turned from the stall indignantly, and marched across
+to look at the fountain, where the gigantic figure of an ogre, in
+the act of dropping a child into the yawning cavern of his jaws,
+stands out against the tall white houses, balconied, jalousied,
+like a bit of Parisian boulevard made picturesque by a dash of
+Swiss quaintness. The vegetables and the pottery stalls, and
+the fluttering cotton handkerchiefs were grouped all about the
+fountain, a confusion of vivid colour.</p>
+
+<p>‘That is something like a statue,’ cried Daphne, looking up
+unblinkingly at the giant grinning at her through a warm hazy
+atmosphere. ‘A dear old thing which recalls the fairy-tales of
+one’s childhood, instead of a stupid old Anglo-Indian general,
+whom nobody ever heard of, riding a tame old horse. Why
+don’t we have Kindlifressers and other fairy tale statues in
+the London streets? They would make London ever so much
+livelier.’</p>
+
+<p>Here Edgar came after her, carrying a small box neatly
+papered and tied up, which he put into her hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘May you never wear heavier fetters than these!’ he said,
+having composed the little speech as he came along.</p>
+
+<p>‘What,’ she exclaimed, ‘did you actually buy the chain after
+all? Well, I do despise you. Could you not see that the man
+was swindling you?’</p>
+
+<p>‘He was not so bad as you think. I only gave him three
+pounds for the chain, and I believe it is worth as much as that.
+I should think it cheap at thirty if you were pleased with it,’ he
+added, with homely tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, you poor predestined victim to extortion,’ exclaimed
+Daphne, looking at him with a serio-comic air. ‘Such a man
+as you ought never to go about without a keeper. However, as
+you have been so good as to allow yourself to be fleeced for my
+sake, I accept the chain with pleasure, and will wear it as the
+badge of my future captivity.’</p>
+
+<p>She shot a swift side-glance at Gerald as she spoke, curious
+to see how he took this direct allusion to an engagement which
+it had been her habit somewhat to ignore. He was standing
+looking listlessly along the street, interested neither in man nor
+woman; but though he had an air of utter vacancy, eyes that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</span>
+saw not, ears that heard not, Daphne detected a quiver of lip
+and brow, which showed her that the shot had gone home.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon had gone to the museum to look at the pictures,
+leaving the young people free to wander where they pleased
+until dinner-time. They went up and down the arched ways,
+looking at the shops and stalls, the country people, the dogs, the
+cattle; then turned aside from this busy thoroughfare, where
+all the life and commerce of the canton seemed to have concentrated
+itself, to explore the dusky cathedral, where all was
+silence, and coolness, and repose. There was one great disappointment
+for Daphne. The grand panoramic picture of the
+Alps, for which the minster terrace is celebrated, was not on
+view to-day. The mountains hid themselves behind a gauzy
+veil, a warm vapour which thickened the air above the old city.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t think what I have done to offend the Alps,’ cried
+Daphne petulantly. ‘They seem to bear a grudge against me.
+They wouldn’t show me their frosty pows at Geneva, and they
+won’t at Berne. I am not going to break my heart about them,
+however. Please let us get the cathedral over as fast as we can,
+and go and look at the bears. I am dying to see the live bears;
+for I have seen so many inanimate ones in stone, and wood, and
+iron, that I seem to have bears on the brain.’</p>
+
+<p>They were standing in the open square in front of the
+cathedral, looking up at the bronze statue of Rudolph von
+Erlach, with the four seated bears at its base. They went into
+the church presently, and admired the fifteenth-century stained
+glass, and sculptured Pietas, and the choir stalls. As they
+were leaving the church, they saw a man and a woman going
+quietly into the vestry, preceded by the minister in his black
+gown.</p>
+
+<p>‘A wedding evidently,’ whispered Edgar to Daphne.
+‘Wouldn’t you like to see a Swiss wedding?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think they are going to be married? What a sober
+idea of matrimony! I should have thought a Swiss wedding
+would have been like a scene in an opera.’</p>
+
+<p>An inquiry of the verger proved that it was really a wedding,
+so they all crept quietly into the spacious vestry, and stood in
+the background, while the priest tied the knot according to the
+Calvinistic manner.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a grandiose or thrilling ceremonial, yet there was
+a certain sober earnestness in its very simplicity. The rite,
+shorn of all ornament, was a religious rite performed with all
+the grave businesslike straightforwardness of a civil agreement.
+Matrimony thus approached wore a somewhat appalling aspect:
+no sweet harmony of boyish voices shrilling a bridal hymn; no
+mighty organ exploding suddenly in the crashing chords of
+Mendelssohn’s Wedding March; only a man and woman standing
+before a priest in a naked stony vestry; a priest who interrogated<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</span>
+them coldly, with his eyes on his book, very much as if
+he had been hearing them their Catechism. The man had a
+dull indifferent look, and there was that in the bearing and
+appearance of the dowdily-dressed woman which hinted that
+the marriage was an after-thought.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne shuddered as she came out of the sunless vestry.</p>
+
+<p>‘That is not my idea of a quiet wedding,’ she said. ‘Please
+let us go to the bears; I am dying to see something cheerful.’</p>
+
+<p>They went back to the crowded arcades, the stalls, the processional
+cattle, and all the life and bustle of a monthly market,
+and down the whole length of the street, till they found themselves
+on a bridge that spanned a deep hollow between two
+hills. On one side of the bridge they looked down into the
+cattle market, where a multitude of blue blouses, of every shade
+and tone, from the vivid azure garment bought yesterday, to
+the faded and patched coat of age and poverty, mixed up with
+the brown, and cream, and roan, and dun of the cows and oxen,
+made a wonderful harmony in blues and browns. On the other
+side there was a famous bear-pit, where half-a-dozen mangy-looking
+animals are maintained in a state of inglorious repose
+for the honour of the city.</p>
+
+<p>The bear is not a handsome or a graceful beast, nor does
+his woolly front beam with intelligence. Yet he has a look of
+ponderous benevolence, a placid air of being nobody’s enemy but
+his own, which commends him to those who enjoy his acquaintance
+only at a distance. He is fond of being fed, and has an
+amiable greediness, which brings him in direct sympathy with
+his patrons. There is something childlike, too, and distinctly
+human in his love of buns, to say nothing of his innate aptitude
+for dancing. These qualities are liable to distract the judgment
+of his admirers, who forget that at heart he is still a savage,
+and that his hug is mortal.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne had provided herself with a bag of cakes, and immediately
+became on the friendliest terms with three ragged-looking
+Bruins who were squatting on their haunches, ready to
+receive the favours of an admiring public. She would not
+believe Baedeker’s story of the English officer, who fell into the
+den, and was killed by these woolly monsters, after a desperate
+fight for life.</p>
+
+<p>‘I couldn’t credit anything unkind of them,’ she protested.
+‘See how patiently that dear thing waits, with his mouth wide
+open, and how dexterously he catches a bit of roll.’</p>
+
+<p>Even the delight of leaning upon a stone parapet to feed
+bears in a not too odoriferous den must come to an end at last,
+and Daphne, having had enough of the national beasts, consented
+to get into a roomy open carriage which Gerald had
+found while she was dispensing her favours, to the admiration
+of half-a-dozen country people, who were leaning lazily against<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</span>
+the parapet, and wondering at the beauty of the two English
+girls in their cool delicate-hued raiment.</p>
+
+<p>There was plenty to admire in the neighbourhood of Berne,
+albeit the Alps were in hiding, and after a light luncheon at a
+confectioner’s in one of the arcades, they drove about till it was
+time to dress for dinner.</p>
+
+<p>They started early on the next afternoon for Thun, and
+between Berne and Thun the Jungfrau first revealed herself in
+all her virginal beauty—whiter, purer than all the rest of the
+mountain world—to Daphne’s delighted eyes. Never could she
+take her fill of gazing on that divine pinnacle, that heaven-aspiring
+mount, rising above a cluster of satellite hills, like
+Jupiter surrounded by his moons.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you told me that on that very mountain-top Moses saw
+God, I should believe you,’ cried Daphne, deeply moved.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sorry to say the pinnacle on which Jehovah revealed
+Himself to His chosen mouthpiece is a shabby affair in comparison
+with yonder peak, a mere hillock of seven thousand feet or
+so,’ said Gerald, looking up from the day before yesterday’s
+<cite>Times</cite>.</p>
+
+<p>‘You have seen it?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have stood on Serbâl, and Gebel Mousa, and Bas Sasâfeh,
+the three separate mountain-tops which contend for the honour
+of having been trodden by the feet of the Creator.’</p>
+
+<p>‘How delightful to have seen so much of this world!’</p>
+
+<p>‘And to have so little left in this world to see,’ answered
+Gerald; ‘there is always the reverse of the shield.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It will make it all the pleasanter for you to settle down
+at Goring Abbey,’ said Daphne, assuming her most practical
+tone. ‘You will not be tormented by the idea of all the lovely
+spots of earth, the wonderful rivers and forests and mountains
+which you have not seen, as Edgar and I must be at dear old
+Hawksyard. But we mean to travel immensely, do we not,
+Edgar?’</p>
+
+<p>Another distinct allusion to her coming life, the near approaching
+time when she and Edgar would be one. The Squire
+of Hawksyard smiled delightedly at this recognition of the bond.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sure to do whatever you wish, and go wherever you
+like,’ he answered; ‘but I am tremendously fond of home, one’s
+own fireside, don’t you know, and one’s own stable.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And one’s own china-closet, and one’s own linen-presses,’
+added Daphne, laughing; ‘and one’s own jams and pickles and
+raspberry vinegar. Are not those things numbered among the
+delights of Hawksyard? But I mean you to take me to the
+Amazon, and when we have thoroughly done the Andes, we’ll
+go over the Isthmus of Panama, and across Mexico, and finish
+up with the Rockies. They are only a continuation of the same
+range, don’t you know, the backbone of the two Americas.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</span></p>
+
+<p>Edgar laughed as at an agreeable joke.</p>
+
+<p>‘But I mean it,’ protested Daphne, with her elbow resting
+on the ledge of the window, and her eyes devouring the Jungfrau.
+‘We are going to be a second Mr. and Mrs. Brassey in
+the way of travelling.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Turchill looked somewhat uncomfortable, moved by the
+thought of a hunting-stable running to seed, at home, while he,
+a wretched sailor at the best of times, lay tossing in some southern
+archipelago, all among dusky islanders, and reduced to a
+fishy and vegetable diet. If Daphne were in earnest the sacrifice
+would have to be made. Upon that point he was certain.
+Never could he resist that capricious creature; never could he
+deny her a pleasure, or beat down her airy whims with the
+sledge-hammer of common sense.</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe we shall be one of the most foolish couples in
+Christendom,’ he said aloud; ‘but I think we shall be one of the
+happiest.’</p>
+
+<p>‘A girl must be very hard-hearted who could not be happy
+with you, Edgar,’ said Madoline, looking at him with a frank
+sisterly smile. ‘You are so thoroughly good and kind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ah, but goodness and kindness don’t always score, you
+know,’ he replied, with a laugh in which there was just a shade
+of sadness.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘LOVE IS NOT OLD, AS WHAN THAT IT IS NEW.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir Vernon’s</span> party had sailed over the smiling waters of
+Thun, with its villa-dotted shores, and its low amphitheatre of
+pastoral hills which form the foreground to the sublimer mountain-land. 
+They and all their belongings had been carried into
+Interlaken by the funny little railway across the Bodelei, that
+fertile garden-ground between two lakes, which has such an
+obvious air of having begun life under water. They had seen
+the long rank of prosperous-looking omnibuses waiting for travellers,
+and in one of those vehicles they had been carried away
+from the walnut-tree boulevard, and all the gaiety and fashion
+of Interlaken, to a rustic road ascending the hill towards the
+pine-woods, and the mountain peaks far away beyond them,
+piled up against the sky.</p>
+
+<p>Here at the Jungfraublich they found a charming suite of
+rooms prepared for them; rooms not gorgeously furnished or
+richly ornamented, but with long French windows which looked
+upon as fair a landscape as the eye of man could desire to
+behold. There rose the Jungfrau in her sublime beauty, above
+the fertile valley with its lakes and meadows, its <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i> and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</span>
+gardens, orchards and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bosquets</i>; all the simplicity and prettiness
+of Nature on a small scale lying at the feet of the immensities.</p>
+
+<p>It was twilight when they arrived, and the first star of evening,
+a faint luminous spot in the blue gray, hovered over the
+snowy pinnacle of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, you dear!’ cried Daphne, to the mountain and not to
+the star; ‘you will be a part of my life from this night. How
+shall I ever live without you when I go back to Warwickshire?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will have to console yourself with an occasional glimpse
+of the Wrekin or the Cotswolds,’ said Madoline, laughing.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am almost sorry I ever came to Switzerland,’ murmured
+Daphne, turning away from the open window with a sigh, when
+she had gazed, and gazed, as if she would fain have made herself
+a part of the thing she looked at.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why, dearest?’ asked Lina.</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I shall be always longing to come back here. I
+shall never be able to tolerate the eternal flatness of home—mole-hills
+instead of mountains.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hawksyard is rather flat, I admit,’ said Edgar, apologetically;
+‘but it is remarkably well drained. There isn’t a healthier
+house in England.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Will not all their modern aestheticism—their Queen Anne
+worship; their straight garden walks, and straight-backed chairs;
+their everlasting tea-trays, and Japanese screens, and sunflowers,
+and dadoes—sicken you after this mountain-land?’ cried
+Daphne. ‘Such a narrow, petty, childish idea of beauty! Have
+these perpendicular people ever seen the Jungfrau, do you
+suppose?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Seen her, and outlived her, and ascended to a higher empyrean
+of art,’ answered Gerald. ‘You poor child, do you know
+that you are going into raptures about things which a well-bred
+person would hardly deign to mention, any more than a Pytchley
+man would stoop to talk about the Brighton Harriers? This is
+cockney Switzerland, as cockney as the Trossachs, or Killarney,
+as Ramsgate and Margate. Everybody knows the Jungfrau, at
+least by sight; everybody has been at Interlaken. It is the chief
+rendezvous of the travellers who come in flocks, and are driven
+from pillar to post like sheep, with an intelligent interpreter
+playing the part of sheep-dog. I hope you will do the Matterhorn
+and Monte Rosa before you go home; and then you will
+be acquainted with a brace of mountains which may be spoken
+about in polite society.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The Jungfrau is good enough for me,’ answered Daphne;
+‘I shall never behold anything more beautiful. Manfred loved
+her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I beg your pardon, that amiable gentleman did not love
+anything. “And you, ye mountains,” he exclaims, “why are ye<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</span>
+beautiful? I cannot love ye.” He does not care for the sun,
+nor for his fellow-men, nor for his own life. He has all the
+misanthropy of Hamlet, without Hamlet’s unselfish reasons for
+being misanthropic. However, I suppose to young ladies in their
+teens he will always appear an interesting character. No doubt
+you will be starting with your alpenstock at daybreak to-morrow
+in search of the Witch of the Alps. You will most likely discover
+her by one of the bridges on the road to Grindelwald,
+offering dirty bunches of edelweiss, or indifferently fresh milk,
+to the passers-by.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne is going nowhere without me,’ said Lina, laying her
+hand caressingly upon her sister’s shoulder. ‘She is too enthusiastic
+to be trusted in strange places. You will not go anywhere
+alone, will you, darling?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I will do nothing in this world to vex you,’ answered
+Daphne earnestly, with the straightest, clearest look in her
+lovely eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring heard her tone, and saw that direct and truthful
+gaze. He knew well how much that little speech meant;
+how grave and complete was the promise in those few words.
+Yes, she would be true, she would be faithful: were it at the
+cost of two broken hearts. He began to perceive that he had
+underrated the moral force of this seemingly volatile creature;
+physically so fragile, so made up of whims and fancies, yet, where
+honour and affection were concerned, so staunch.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the evening, after they had dined, and Sir Vernon
+had retired for the night, Mr. Goring loitered alone in the terraced
+garden of the hotel. The mountain, faintly touched with
+silvery light from a young moon, rose in front of him, and below
+glimmered those earthlier lights which told of human life—yellow
+candle-light in wooden <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i>; the flare of the gas yonder,
+faint in the distance, where the walnut-tree walk was all alive
+with the light of its hotels and its modest Kursaal. A fitful
+gust of music from the band came floating up the valley. Behind
+him the hotel stood out whitely against a background of
+dark pine-woods; lights in many windows. Those ten lighted
+windows in a row on the first storey belonged to Sir Vernon’s
+apartments. He looked up, vaguely wondering which was
+Daphne’s window. That one, at the end of the range, most
+likely—the casement wide open to the night and the mystic
+mountain-land. While he was deciding this a white-robed figure
+stepped lightly out upon the balcony, and stood there, gazing at
+the far-away peaks faintly outlined against a purple sky.</p>
+
+<p>There were three or four other loungers upon the terrace,
+each with his cigar, the luminous point of which gleamed here
+and there among the bushes like a glowworm. There was no
+reason why Daphne should distinguish Gerald Goring from the
+rest, as he sat in an angle of the stone balustrade, half hidden<span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</span>
+in the shadow of an acacia, lonely, dissatisfied; yet it was painful
+to him, in his egotism, to see her standing there, immovable,
+a lovely statuesque form, with upturned face and clasped hands,
+worshipping the blind, dumb, unresponsive goddess Nature, and
+all unconscious that he, her lover, with a human heart to feel
+and to suffer, was looking up at her with passionate yearning
+from the dewy darkness below.</p>
+
+<p>‘She does not care a jot for me; she is harder than the
+nether millstone,’ he said to himself savagely. ‘Yet I once
+thought her the softest, most yielding thing in creation—a being
+so impressionable that she might be moulded by a thought of
+mine. I feared the touching of our spirits, as if I were flame
+and she tinder. Yet our souls have touched, and kindled, and
+burst into a blaze; and she has strength of mind to pluck herself
+away unscathed, not a feather of her purity scorched, from
+that fiery contact.’</p>
+
+<p>He sat in his shadowy corner, lazily finishing his cigar, and
+looking up at the figure in the balcony till it slowly melted from
+his gaze, and a muslin curtain was dropped across the open window.
+Then he left the garden and wandered away up the wooded
+hillside, by narrow winding paths, which seemed to have no particular
+direction, but to have been worn by the footprints of
+other idlers as purposeless—it might be as unhappy—as he. He
+stayed in the shadowy wood for a long time, smoking a second
+cigar, and preferring that perfumed solitude, and his own gloomy
+thoughts to any diversion which the little lighted town down in
+the green hollow yonder could have furnished him. And then,
+at last, on the verge of midnight, when all the lighted windows
+of the Jungfraublich had gone out one after another, and the
+big white barrack looked blank and bare, he turned and groped
+his way back to it through the sinuous woodland paths, and was
+admitted by a sleepy porter, who was mildly reproachful at having
+been kept up so long.</p>
+
+<p>A grand excursion had been planned for the next day, Sir
+Vernon approving the scheme, and politely requesting to be left
+out of it.</p>
+
+<p>‘You wouldn’t know what to do with me,’ he said. ‘I should
+be a burden to you, and I should be terribly tiresome to myself.
+I have letters to write which will occupy me all the morning, and
+in the afternoon I can stroll down to the Kursaal, or sit in the
+garden here, or take a little walk in the wood. You will be
+back before nine o’clock, I daresay.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline was loth to leave her father for so long a day. He
+was an invalid, and required a good deal of attention, she reminded
+him.</p>
+
+<p>‘There is Jinman, my dear; he can do all I want. Of course
+it is much pleasanter for me to be waited on by you; but Jinman
+is very handy, and will serve on a pinch.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘But all those letters, dear father,’ urged Lina, looking at
+an alarming bundle of businesslike documents. ‘Could I not
+help you with those? Could not the greater part of them stand
+over till we are at Montreux?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Some of them might, perhaps; but some must be answered
+to-day. Don’t worry yourself about me, Lina; I know you
+have set your heart upon going up to Müren with Daphne.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like to show her the scenery which delighted me so
+years ago,’ answered Lina; ‘but I can’t bear the idea of leaving
+you for so long.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear child, you are talking nonsense,’ said Sir Vernon
+testily. ‘In October you are going to leave me altogether.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; but I shall not be leaving you in a strange hotel; and
+I shall be so near, at your beck and call, always.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon, having made up his mind to the sacrifice, carried
+it out with consistent fortitude. He himself ordered the carriage
+which was to carry off his beloved daughter, with those other
+three who were comparatively indifferent to him.</p>
+
+<p>They drove away from the hotel immediately after a seven
+o’clock breakfast, in the clear light of morning, while the fields
+and hedges were still dewy, and the earth wore her fairest freshest
+colours and breathed out her sweetest odours. Soon after
+they left the village they came to the road beside the deep and
+rapid Lutschine, which cleaves the heart of the valley. On
+either side rose a lofty wall of hills, slope above slope, climbing
+up to heaven, clothed to the very summit with tall feathery firs,
+some of stupendous size, the sombre tints of these patriarchs relieved
+by the tender green of the young larches; the White
+Lutschine rushing on all the while, a wild romantic stream,
+tumbling and seething over masses of stone. Here by the river
+bank they stopped to see the murder-stone, an inscription cut on
+the face of the rock, which tells how at this spot a brother slew
+his brother.</p>
+
+<p>It is a lovely drive, so lovely that it is hardly possible for the
+mind to be distracted from its fairness by any other thought.
+Daphne sat silent in her corner of the carriage, drinking in the
+beauty of the scene, her gaze wandering upward and upward to
+those mighty hills, those forests upon the edge of heaven, so remote,
+so inaccessible in their loveliness, the greenery pierced
+every here and there by narrow streamlets that came trickling
+down like wandering flashes of silvery light. Solitude and silence
+were the prevailing expression of that exquisite scene. The
+cattle had all been removed to the upper regions, to remote
+pastures on the borderland of the everlasting snow-fields; of
+human life there were few signs; only a distant <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlet</i> showing
+here and there, perched on some ledge of the green hills. The
+voice of the river was the one sound that broke the summer
+stillness.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</span></p>
+
+<p>There was a pleasant contrast to this solemn loneliness, this
+silent loveliness of Nature without humanity, when the carriage
+drove jingling up to the inn at Lauterbrunnen, where there was
+all the life and bustle of a country inn at fair-time or market.
+Many vehicles and horses in the open space in front of the
+house; a long verandah, under which travellers were sitting
+resting after an early morning tramp from Mürren or Grindelwald;
+guides, with swarthy sunburnt faces, homely, good-natured,
+unintelligent, sitting at ease upon a long stone parapet,
+waiting their chances; a great fuss and noise of taking horses
+in and bringing horses out; a call for hay and water; a few
+people strolling down the road to look at the Staubach, and telling
+each other admiringly, inspired by the prophet Baedeker,
+that it is the highest unbroken fall in the world. It was very
+glorious in the morning sunshine, a dim rainbow-tinted arc of
+spray; and Daphne thought of the Witch of the Alps, and how
+she had worn this cloudlike fall as a garment, when she showed
+herself to Manfred. There was no inn there in those far-away
+romantic days—no odour of bad brandy and worse wine; no
+tourists; no cockneyism of any kind—only the sweet pastoral
+valley in its lonely beauty, and the solemn regions of mountain
+and snow rising whitely above its placid greenery, and walling it
+in from the commonplace earth.</p>
+
+<p>There was a halt of half an hour or so at Lauterbrunnen,
+just long enough to pay proper homage to the Staubach, and to
+explore the queer little primitive village, and for Daphne to
+burden herself with a number of souvenirs, all more or less of a
+staggy or goaty order, bargaining sturdily for the same with the
+sunburnt proprietor of a covered stall opposite the inn, whose
+honesty in no case demanded more than thrice the amount he
+was prepared to accept. By the time Daphne had concluded
+her transactions with this merchant of mountain <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">bric-à-brac</i>,
+and had made herself spiky with paper-knives and walking-sticks
+of the horny kind—which treasures she reluctantly surrendered
+to the safe keeping of an inn servant, to be packed in the
+carriage against her return—the steeds were ready to convey the
+two ladies up the mountain-path, the gentlemen being bent upon
+going up on foot. Daphne wanted to walk, and had just bought
+herself an alpenstock with that view, but Lina would not let her
+undertake the journey; so she handed Edgar her alpenstock,
+and allowed herself to be hoisted into a queer kind of saddle,
+with a railing round it, and Lina being similarly mounted, they
+began the ascent, going through more mud, just at starting, than
+seemed compatible with such perfect summer weather.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope, Edgar,’ said Daphne gravely, ‘that you won’t take
+your idea of my horsemanship from my performance on this
+animal, and in this saddle, or else I am afraid you’ll never let
+me ride Black Pearl.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</span></p>
+
+<p>Edgar laughingly assured her that her seat was perfection,
+even in the railed-in saddle, and that she should have the best
+horse money could buy, or judgment secure.</p>
+
+<p>The two young men went on before them, leaping from
+stone to stone, and making great play with their alpenstocks as
+they bounded across the streamlets which frequently intersected
+their path. It was a narrow, narrow way, winding up the
+shoulder of the hill, now in sunlight, now in shade; the summer
+air sweetened with the scent of the pine-trees; pine-clad slopes
+above, pine-clad slopes below, sometimes gently slanting downward,
+a green hillside which little children might play upon,
+sometimes a sheer descent, terrible to the eye; <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i> dotting
+the meadows far below; villages spread out on the greensward
+of the valley, and looking like clusters of toy houses; the road
+winding through the valley like a silver ribbon; the awful
+Jungfrau range facing them, as they ascended, in all its unspeakable
+majesty; grander, and yet ever grander, as they came
+nearer to it.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, as they rode through the pine-trees, they seemed
+to be riding straight into the snowy mountains; they were so
+close, so close to that white majesty. Then as they came suddenly
+into the open, those airy peaks receded, remote as ever,
+melting farther and farther away as one rode after them, like a
+never-to-be-reached fairyland.</p>
+
+<p>‘I could almost cry with vexation,’ exclaimed Daphne after
+one of these optical illusions. ‘I thought we were close to the
+Jungfrau, and there she stands smiling down at me, with her
+pallid enigmatical smile, from the very top of the world. Edgar,
+if you love me, you must take me up that impertinent mountain
+before I am year older.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You were talking yesterday of the Cordilleras.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know, but we must finish off the Alps first—Mont Blanc,
+and the Jungfrau, the Schreckhorn, the Rothhorn, the Matterhorn,
+the Finsteraarhorn, and all the rest of them. I cannot be
+defied by the insolence of Nature. She has thrown her gauntlet,
+and I must positively pick it up. If the mountain won’t come
+to Mahomet—and the general experience seems to show that
+mountains are obstinate things—Mahomet must go to the mountain.
+I mean to have it out with Mont Blanc before I die.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t believe a lady has ever done the ascent,’ said Edgar,
+leading his mistress’s meek and patient steed along a winding
+ledge. The animal was a mere infant, rising three, but as free
+from skittishness as if he had been rising three-and-twenty.</p>
+
+<p>‘That shows how densely ignorant you must be of the age
+you live in,’ protested Daphne. ‘Be sure that there is nothing
+in this life which the man of the present can do which the
+woman of the present won’t imitate; and the more essentially
+masculine the thing is the more certain she is to attempt it.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘But I hope you don’t rank yourself among masculine
+women, Daphne,’ murmured Edgar, drawing protectingly near
+her, as they turned a sharp corner.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t; but I mean to ascend Mont Blanc.’</p>
+
+<p>They were approaching the village on the height. The
+Lauterbrunnen valley was sinking deeper and deeper into remoteness,
+a mere green cleft in the mountains. They had met
+and passed many people on their way: ladies being carried
+down by sturdy natives in a kind of sedan-chair, something of
+the palki species; voyagers struggling upwards with their belongings,
+with a view to spending some days in the quiet settlement
+among the snow-peaks; guides jogging by with somebody else’s
+luggage; mules laden with provisions. The guides gave each
+other a grinning good-day as they passed, and exchanged remarks
+in a <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">patois</i> not very easy to understand; remarks that
+had a suggestion of being critical, and not altogether commendatory,
+of the clients at that moment under escort.</p>
+
+<p>‘Here we are, up in the skies at last,’ cried Daphne, as she
+sprang lightly to the ground, spurning her lover’s proffered aid,
+and just brushing against the eager arms held out to receive
+her; ‘and oh how dreadfully far away the top of the Jungfrau
+still is, and how very dirty she looks now we are on a level with
+her shoulder!’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is too late in the year for you to see her in her virginal
+purity. A good deal of the snow has melted,’ said Madoline apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>‘But it ought not to melt. I thought I was coming to a
+region of eternal snow. Why, the lower peaks are horribly
+streaky and brown. Thank Heaven the Silberhorn still looks
+dazzlingly white. And is this Mürren? A real mountain
+village? How I wish we were going to live here for a month.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I fancy you would get horribly tired of it,’ suggested
+Gerald Goring.</p>
+
+<p>She did not stay to argue the point, but ordered Edgar to
+explore the village with her immediately. The big wooden
+barrack of an hotel, with its bright green blinds and pine balconies,
+looked down upon her, the commonplace type of an advanced
+civilisation. Young men, all affecting a more or less
+Alpine-Clubbish air, lounged about in various easy attitudes;
+young women, in every variety of hat and gauze veil, read
+Tauchnitz novels, or made believe to be sketching, under artistic-looking
+umbrellas. Daphne made but a cursory survey of this
+tourist population before she started off upon her voyage of
+discovery, with Edgar in delighted attendance on her steps.
+Madoline and Gerald, who both knew all that there was to be
+known about Mürren, were content to loiter in the garden of
+the Hôtel des Alpes, dreamily contemplative of the sublimities
+around and about them.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I give you half an hour for your explorations,’ said Gerald,
+as Daphne and her swain departed; ‘if you are not back by
+that time, Lina and I will eat all the luncheon. At this elevation
+luncheon is not a matter to be trifled with. There are
+limits to the supplies.’</p>
+
+<p>He went into the hotel to give his orders, while Lina walked
+slowly up and down one of the terraced pathways, looking at the
+wild chaos of glacier and rock before her, looking, yet seeing but
+little of that chilly grandeur, caring but little for its origin or
+its history, with sad eyes turned inward, vaguely contemplating
+a vague sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>It was not a grief of yesterday’s date—it was a sorrow made
+up of doubts and anxieties which had their beginning in Gerald
+Goring’s letter telling her of his intended trip to Canada.
+From that hour to this she had perceived a gradual change in
+him. His letters from the Western world, kind and affectionate
+as they had been, were altogether different from the letters he
+had written to her in former years. When he came back the
+man himself seemed different. He was not less kind, or less
+attentive, less eager to gratify and to anticipate her wishes. To
+her, and in all his relations with her, he was faultless: but he
+was changed. Something had gone out of him—life, spirit,
+soul, the flame which makes the lamp glorious and beautiful;
+something was faded and dead in him; leaving the man himself
+a gentlemanly piece of mechanism, like one of those victims to
+anatomical experiment from whose living body the brain, or
+some particular portion of the brain, has been abstracted, and
+which mechanically performs and repeats the same actions with
+a hideous soulless monotony. ‘Was it that he loved her less?
+Was it that he had ceased to love her?’ she had asked herself,
+recoiling with shuddering heart-sickness from the thought; as
+if she had found herself suddenly on the verge of some horrible
+abyss, and seen inevitable ruin and death below. No, she told
+herself, judging his heart by her own. A love that had grown
+as theirs had grown, side by side with the gradual growth of
+mind and body, a love interwoven with every memory and every
+hope, was not of the kind to change unawares to indifference.
+She was perfectly free from the taint of vanity; but she knew
+that she was worthy of her lover’s love. She, who had been
+her father’s idol, the object of respect and consideration from
+all about her, was accustomed to the idea of being beloved. She
+had been told too often of her beauty not to know that she
+was handsomer than the majority of women. She knew that in
+mental power she was her lover’s equal: by birth, by fortune,
+by every attribute and quality, she was fitted to be his wife,
+to rule over his household, and to be a purifying and elevating
+influence in his life. His mother had loved her as warmly as it
+was possible for that languid nature to love anything. Their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</span>
+two lives were interwoven by the tenderest associations of the
+past as well as by the solemn engagement which bound them in
+the present. No, it was not possible for Madoline, seeing all
+things from the standpoint of her own calm and evenly-balanced
+mind, to imagine infidelity in a lover so long and so closely bound
+to her. Those sudden aberrations of the human mind which
+wreck so many lives, for which no looker-on can account, and
+which make men and women a world’s wonder, had never come
+within the range of her experience.</p>
+
+<p>Rejecting the idea of inconstancy, Madoline was compelled
+to find some other reason for the indefinable change which had
+slowly been revealed to her since Gerald’s last home-coming.
+What could it be except the languor of ill-health, or, perhaps,
+the terrible satiety of a life which had so few duties, and so
+many indulgences, a life that called for no effort of mind, for
+not one act of self-denial?</p>
+
+<p>‘Every man ought to have a career,’ she said to herself.
+‘My poor Gerald has none; no ambition; nothing to hope for,
+or work for, or build upon. The new days of his life bring him
+nothing but old pleasures. He is getting weary and worn out
+in the very morning of existence. What will he be when the
+day begins to wane?’</p>
+
+<p>She had been thinking of these things for a long time, and
+had determined upon opening her mind to her lover, seriously,
+candidly, without reserve, with all the outspoken freedom of one
+who deemed herself a part of his life, his second self.</p>
+
+<p>Here, in the face of these solemn heights, which seem ever
+typical of the loftier aims of life—all the more so, perhaps,
+because of that air of unattainableness which pervades them—she
+felt as if they were more alone, farther from all the sordid
+considerations of worldly wisdom than in the valley below. She
+could speak to him here from her heart of hearts.</p>
+
+<p>He was walking by her side along one of the narrow paths,
+just where a rustic fence separated the grounds of the hotel
+from the steep mountain side—walking somewhat listlessly, lost
+in a dreamy silence—when she put her arm gently through his
+and drew a little nearer to him.</p>
+
+<p>‘Gerald dearest, I want to talk to you—seriously.’</p>
+
+<p>He turned suddenly, and looked at her, with more of alarm
+in his countenance than she had anticipated.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said with a sweet smile. ‘I am
+not going to be severe. I am only anxious.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Anxious about what?’</p>
+
+<p>‘About you, dear love; about your health, mental and
+physical. You remember what you told me before you went to
+Canada.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your trip did you good, did it not?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Worlds of good. I came home a whole man.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But since you came home the old feeling of languor has
+returned, has it not? You take so little interest in life; you
+look at everything with such a weary indifferent air.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, do you expect me to go into raptures with the
+beaten tracks and cockney lions of Switzerland, as poor little
+Daphne does? There is not a yard of the ground we have
+been passing over that I do not know by heart—that I have
+not seen under every condition of atmosphere, and in every
+variety of circumstances. You forget how many months of
+my life I wasted in balancing myself upon razor-edged <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">arrêtes</i>,
+and hewing my way up perpendicular peaks with an ice-axe.
+I cannot gush about these dear old familiar mountains, or fall
+into an ecstasy because the lakes are bluer and broader than
+our Avon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t expect you to be ecstatic, dear; I only want to
+know that you are happy, and that you take a healthy interest
+in life. I have been thinking lately that a man in your position
+ought to have a public career. Without public duties the
+life of a very rich man must inevitably be idle, since all his
+private duties are done by other people. And an idle life never
+yet was a happy one.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Spoken like a copy-book, my dearest,’ answered Gerald
+lightly. ‘Well, I own I have led an idle life hitherto, but some
+of it has been rather laborious idleness; as when I accomplished
+the passage of the Roththal Sattel and ascended yonder Jungfrau
+between sunrise and sundown; or when I came as near
+death as a man can come, and yet escape it, while climbing the
+Pointe des Ecrins, in the French Alps.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I want you by-and-by to think of another kind of labour,
+Gerald,’ said Lina, with tender seriousness. ‘I want you to
+think of doing good to your fellow-men—you, who are so gifted,
+and who have the means of carrying out every benevolent intention.
+I want you to be useful in your generation, and to win
+for yourself one of those great enduring names which are only
+won by usefulness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Come now, my sweetest monitor, there you shoot beyond
+the mark. Surely Virgil and Horace, Dante and Shakespeare,
+have won names of wider glory than all the useful men who
+ever lived. That idea of usefulness has never had much charm
+for me. I have not a practical mind. I take after my mother,
+who was one of the lilies of the field, rather than after my
+father, who belonged to the toilers and spinners. If I had discovered
+in my nature any vein of the gold of poetry, I would
+have been willing to dig hard for that immortal ore; but as I
+can’t be a poet, I don’t care to be anything else.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And with your talents and your wealth you con be content
+to be nothing?’ exclaimed Lina, deeply shocked.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Nothing, except a tolerably indulgent landlord, a patron of
+the fine arts, on a small scale, and by-and-by, if you please—your—obedient—husband.’</p>
+
+<p>The last words came somewhat slowly.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you are happy, I am content,’ said Lina, with a sigh;
+‘but it is because I fancy you are not happy that I urge you to
+lead a more active life, to give yourself greater variety of
+thought and occupation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And do you think that, if I were unhappy, the wear and
+fret of public life, the dealing with workers whose chief object
+seems to be to frustrate and stultify each other’s efforts; to be
+continually baulked and disappointed; to have my most generous
+impulses ridiculed, my loftiest hopes cried down as the
+dreams of a madman; perhaps, at the close of my career, after
+I had given my days and nights, my brain and body, to the
+public cause, to be denounced as an incendiary and a lunatic—do
+you think a career of that kind would ensure happiness?
+No, love, Providence, in its divine wisdom, has allowed me to
+belong to the lotus-eating class. Let me nibble my lotus, and
+lie at ease in my sunshiny valley, and be content to let others
+enjoy the rapture of the fray.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If I could be sure that you were happy,’ faltered Lina,
+feeling very unhappy herself.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ought I not to be happy, when you are so good to me?’
+he asked, taking her hand and pressing it tenderly, with very
+real affection, but an affection chastened by remorse. ‘I am
+as happy as a man can be who has inherited a natural bent
+to melancholy. My mother was not a cheerful woman, as you
+know.’</p>
+
+<p>This was an undeniable fact. Lady Geraldine, after having
+made what some people called a splendid marriage, and others a
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">mésalliance</i>, had gone through life with an air of subdued
+melancholy, an elegant pensiveness which suited her languid
+beauty as well as the colours she chose for her gowns, or the
+flowers she wore in her hair. She had borne herself with infinite
+grace, as one whose cup of life was tinctured with sorrow,
+beneath the snowy calm of whose bosom the slow consuming
+fire of grief was working its gradual ravages. She died of an
+altogether commonplace disease, but she contrived so to bear
+herself in her decay, that when she was dead everybody was
+convinced she had perished slowly of a broken heart, and that
+she had never smiled after her marriage with Mr. Giles-Goring.
+This was society’s verdict upon a woman who had lived an
+utterly selfish and self-indulgent life, and who had spent fifteen
+hundred a-year upon her milliner.</p>
+
+<p>Lina and Gerald strolled up and down for a little while,
+almost in silence. She had said her say, and nothing had come
+of it. Her disappointment was bitter; for she had fancied that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</span>
+it needed but a few words from her to kindle the smouldering
+fires of ambition. She had supposed that every man was ambitious,
+however he might allow his aspirations to be choked by
+the thorns of this world: and here she had found in the lover
+of her choice a man without the faintest desire to achieve greatness,
+or to do good in his generation. Had he been such a man
+as Edgar Turchill, she would have felt no surprise at his indifference
+to the wider questions of life. Edgar was a man born to
+do his duty in a narrow groove; a large-hearted, simple-minded
+creature, but little removed from the peasant who tills the
+fields, and whose desires and hopes are shut in by the narrow
+circle of village life. But Gerald Goring—Gerald, whose ardent
+boyhood, whose passion for all the loftier delights of life, had
+lifted him so high above the common ruck of mankind—to find
+him at nine-and-twenty a languid pessimist, willing to live a life
+as selfish and as useless as his mother had led before him: this
+was indeed hard. And it was harder still for Madoline to discover
+how much she had overrated her influence upon him.
+A few years ago a word from her had been sufficient to urge
+him to any effort, to give bent and purpose to his mind; but a
+few years ago he had been still warm with the flush and fire of
+early youth.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne and Edgar joined them presently, both warm and
+breathless after a small experiment in the climbing way.</p>
+
+<p>‘We have seen everything, and we have been up a mountain,’
+exclaimed Daphne. ‘It is the funniest little village—a
+handful of wooden cottages perched on a narrow track straggling
+along anyhow on the very edge of the hill; a little new
+church that looks as if it had dropped from the clouds; a morsel
+of a post-office; a stack of wood beside every house; and a
+bundle of green vegetables hanging to dry in every porch and
+balcony. Poor people, do they live upon dried vegetables, I
+wonder? We found an English lady and her son sitting in the
+middle of the road—if you can call it a road—sketching a native
+boy. He was a very handsome boy, and sat as still as a statue.
+We stood ever so long and watched the two artists; and then we
+had a climb; and Edgar says I am a good climber. Do you
+think,’ coaxingly to Lina, ‘we might try the Silberhorn after
+luncheon?’</p>
+
+<p>They lunched in a sunny airy corner of the big bare <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">salle-à-manger</i>
+merrily enough, or with that seeming gaiety of heart
+which brightens so many a board, notwithstanding that the
+stream flows darkly enough below the ripple and the gleam.
+Daphne had made it the business of her life to seem happy and
+at ease ever since that fatal night at Fribourg. She wanted
+Gerald Goring to believe that she was satisfied with her lot—nay,
+even that she was honestly attached to her plighted husband,
+and that her conduct that night had been but a truant<span class="pagenum" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</span>
+impulse, a momentary aberration from common sense and duty.
+She was fighting her battle bravely, sometimes smiling with an
+aching heart, sometimes really succeeding in being happy, with
+the inconsiderate unreasoning happiness of youth and health,
+and the rapture of living in a world where all was alike new and
+beautiful. After luncheon she went out with Edgar for another
+ramble, until it should be time to begin the descent to Lauterbrunnen.
+They had all agreed to walk down, in a leisurely
+way, after tea; and the horses had already gone back with
+the two men who had led them up. Daphne wanted to learn
+where and how she could get nearest to the mountains. It
+seemed provoking to see them there, so near, and yet as far
+beyond her reach as if she had been looking at them from her
+window at Interlaken.</p>
+
+<p>‘Would it really be too much for an afternoon walk?’ she
+asked, gazing longingly at the Silberhorn.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald explained the preparations and the assistance, and
+the length of time which would be required for any attempt
+upon that snowy crest.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please show me the very ledge where the child’s red frock
+used to be seen,’ she asked, perusing the wilderness of crag and
+peak.</p>
+
+<p>‘What child? what frock?’ asked Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you know that ever so many years ago a lammergeier
+carried off a child from this village of Mürren, and alighted
+with it upon an inaccessible shelf of rock on the side of the
+Jungfrau, and that for years afterwards some red scraps, the
+remnants of the poor baby’s clothes, were seen amongst the
+snow?’</p>
+
+<p>‘A pitiful story, wherever you found it,’ said Gerald; ‘but
+I think the baby’s frock would have been blown away or buried
+under the snow before the vulture had forgotten the flavour of
+the baby.’</p>
+
+<p>And then, seeing that Daphne hungered for any information
+about yonder mountain, he condescended to tell her how he
+and a couple of friends, allied by the climbing propensity rather
+than by ancient friendship, had ascended the north face of the
+Silberhorn, with the idea of finding a direct route over its summit
+to the top of the Jungfrau; how after ten hours of very
+hard work they had planted their feet on the top of the dazzling
+peak, only to find the snow falling thickly round them,
+and the Jungfrau and the Giessen glacier already hidden behind
+a fleecy cloud; how, after waiting in vain for the storm
+to pass, they had made a perilous descent to the upper plateau
+of the Giessen glacier; and how there, amidst thick clouds and
+driving snow, they groped their way round the edges of huge
+crevasses before they hit on a practical path descending the
+ice-fall; and how, finding the night closing in upon them, they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</span>
+were fain to sit upon a ledge of rock under a sheltering cliff till
+daybreak.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor things!’ exclaimed Daphne with infinite compassion;
+‘and you never reached the top of the Jungfrau after all.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not by that way. I have scaled her granite point from the
+Roththal Sattel.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And is it very lovely up there?’</p>
+
+<p>‘<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">C’est selon.</i> When I mounted, the Maiden was wrapped in
+cloud, and there was no distant view, nor could we spare more
+than a quarter of an hour for rest on the summit; but we
+saw an avalanche or two on our way, and altogether we had
+a very good time.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘I MEANE WELL, BY GOD THAT SIT ABOVE.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was pleasant to drink tea at a little table in the garden of
+the inn, with the white mountain world spread before them in
+all its glory, flushed with the golden lights of afternoon. Edgar
+looked ineffably happy as he sat sipping his tea and watching
+Daphne eat bread and honey, which seemed her chief nutriment
+in this part of the world; for Swiss poultry and Swiss
+veal, for all the varieties of <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">vol-au-vent</i>, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fricandeau</i>, <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">ris de veau</i>,
+and <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">fricassée</i>, under which the inevitable calf disguised himself,
+she showed herself absolutely indifferent; but she had an infinite
+capacity for Swiss rolls and Swiss honey.</p>
+
+<p>While they were sitting at tea, resting before they began
+the downward walk, Mr. Turchill produced a letter which that
+morning’s post had brought him from his mother: one of those
+worthy commonplace letters which set one’s teeth on edge
+when read aloud amidst the loftiest aspects of nature. But
+Edgar saw nothing beyond the love and the kindness in his
+mother’s epistle, and would have read it on the summit of
+Caucasus, yea, on that topmost untrodden snow-peak which the
+Persians call the Holy Mountain, and would have perceived no
+discord between the letter and the scene.</p>
+
+<p>‘The dear mother’s letter is full of you, Daphne,’ he said;
+‘would it bore you and Mr. Goring if I were to read a little of
+it, Lina?’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goring protested, with a stifled yawn, that he would
+be delighted. ‘There is nothing,’ he asserted, ‘more interesting
+than domestic correspondence. Look at the Paston letters,
+for instance. And I could fancy your mother writing quite in
+the Paston style,’ he added graciously.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar unfolded the thin, closely written sheet, written in
+those neat, sloping characters which had been drilled into all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</span>
+the young ladies at Miss Tompion’s academy, and crossed—for
+the habit of crossing a letter had obtained in Mrs. Turchill’s
+youth, and she returned to it instinctively under stress
+of foreign postage, albeit twopence halfpenny is not a ruinous
+amount to pay for a letter.</p>
+
+<p>‘“I am pleased to hear that Daphne is enjoying herself,
+and that she is so enthusiastic about the scenery. I remember,
+when I learned drawing at Miss Tompion’s, doing a very pretty
+sketch of Chamounix, with Mont Blanc in the background, in
+black and white chalks on tinted paper. I believe some of the
+snow was scratched in with a penknife by Signor Pasticcio, but
+all the rest was my very own, and papa gave me a sovereign
+when the drawing was sent home. It used to hang in your
+father’s dressing-room, but one of the housemaids contrived to
+break the glass one day with her broom-handle, and I did not
+care to go to the expense of having it reglazed: Gilbert is so
+dear for all jobs of that kind. I have always understood that
+the Jungfrau is very inferior to Mont Blanc; but as you say
+Byron admired it I have no doubt it is very beautiful, though,
+of course, in a minor degree. Every geography will tell you
+that Mont Blanc is the higher. I hope you are careful to avoid
+wet feet”—hum—hum—hum,’ mumbled Edgar, skipping the
+tender mother’s injunctions about his care of his health, and
+hurrying on to that part of the letter which related to Daphne.
+‘Oh, here it is. “Tell Daphne, with my love, that I am going
+carefully over all the house-linen—weeding out all the sheets
+that are weak in the middle”—dear old mother! she always
+will go into details—“and making a large addition to the table-linen.
+I have also had a new inventory made in duplicate. I
+know that the modern idea is for the bride to provide the
+house-linen. That is all very well when the husband is a young
+man who has his own way to make in the world, but not for
+my boy, who has a home of his own—a fine old house which his
+ancestors have lived in, and spent their money upon, from
+generation to generation. I hope Daphne will be as fond of the
+old Hawksyard glass and china—which, as she knows, is the
+collection of more than a century—as she is of the mountains;
+but I’m afraid the romantic kind of temperament which goes
+into raptures with mountains is hardly the disposition which
+could take delight in housekeeping, and the many details of
+home-life.”’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>‘I hope you won’t be angry with her for saying that,’ added
+Edgar apologetically, as he hastily folded the letter, feeling that
+he had read too much. ‘You know she means it kindly.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I know she has been ever so much more indulgent than I
+deserve,’ answered Daphne gaily; ‘I mean to be a most dutiful
+daughter-in-law, and to learn everything your mother will deign<span class="pagenum" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</span>
+to teach me in the way of housekeeping, from hemming tea-cloths
+to making mincemeat. One ought to make one’s own
+mincemeat, ought one not, Edgar? Do you and I belong to
+the class who make their own mincemeat?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think it’s rather a question of inclination than of rank,
+love. But I’d rather you left the pies and puddings to the
+cook. I’d rather have you riding across the Vale of the Red
+Horse with me than stoning raisins or chopping suet in the
+still-room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And I would rather, too.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you know that there is a great deal of quiet sagacity in
+your mother’s gentle depreciation of Daphne’s passion for
+mountain scenery?’ said Gerald, his face lighting up with
+something of the old mischievous spirit, something of that
+gaiety of heart with which he had teased Daphne in the days
+when she was Poppæa and he was Nero! ‘This frantic admiration
+of snow-peaks is only a modern feeling, a mere fashion
+and fad of the moment, like the worship of Chippendale furniture
+and Adam chimney-pieces. The old Greeks knew nothing
+of it. The ancients never raved about their mountains. They
+valued them only because their tops touched the blue ether, the
+world peopled by the gods. Even your Shakespeare, the man
+of universal mind, had no passion for mountain lands.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because he had never seen anything higher than the Wrekin,
+poor darling!’ said Daphne, with delicious compassion; as
+if she were speaking of a London Arab who had never seen a
+buttercup.</p>
+
+<p>‘Ruskin thinks it was good for his genius to have seen so little.
+“No mountain passions were to be allowed to Shakespeare,” he
+says; “Shakespeare could be allowed no mountains—not even any
+supreme natural beauty. He had to be left with his kingcups
+and clover, pansies, the passing clouds, the Avon’s flow, and the
+undulating hills and woods of Warwickshire, lest it should make
+him in the least overrate their power on the strong, full-fledged
+minds of men.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘That is remarkably clever,’ said Daphne; ‘but there is a
+tone of calm superiority about it which makes my blood boil.
+Why will all the critics insist upon patronising Shakespeare, as
+if they knew so much more about him than ever be know about
+himself? Talk of vivisection indeed, vivisection is not half so
+atrocious as the way Shakespeare has been treated by modern
+criticism!’</p>
+
+<p>And now, when all the valley below them lay steeped in
+golden light, when the northward-facing mountains were beginning
+to take the chill cold gray of evening, and the western
+pinnacles were flushed with rose and purple, they began their
+descent of the narrow winding way, gaily, to all seeming, for
+they talked a good deal, and Daphne lingered on her way to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</span>
+gather the wild flowers that grew on the thymy banks—harebells,
+and clover, gentian, and the Alpine rose, a white starry
+flower with a long fragile stem, and delicate ferns, and here and
+there a handful of wild strawberries. Gerald had more than
+once to insist upon her hastening her footsteps, lest night should
+overtake them on the steep mountain path.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you loiter so much I will put you into a wooden sledge
+when we get to the half-way house, and run you down the mountain,’
+he threatened.</p>
+
+<p>Lovelier and yet more lovely looked the pine-woods, the
+green slopes, the fertile valley, the far-away white peaks, so
+shadowy, so awful in the changing lights of evening. Half
+the sky was ablaze with crimson and orange, fading off into
+tender opalescent greens and purples, the indescribable hues of
+rare jasper and rarer jade, as they neared the Staubach.
+They had loitered as long as it was safe to loiter. The lamps
+were lighted at the inn, and their coachman was watching for
+their return. They drove home through the gray twilight,
+which was fast deepening into night, and through a landscape
+of deepest gloom—a narrow region, walled in by dark hills;
+dim lights, dotted here and there amidst the darkness, ever so
+far apart, telling of lonely lives, of humble peasant homes
+where pleasure and variety were unknown, a life of monotonous
+labour, hidden from the world.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you enjoyed your day, Daphne?’ asked Lina, as they
+drove home, the rapid river flowing noisily beside them, the
+white foam on the waters flashing through the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>‘Enjoyed it? There is no word big enough to say how
+delightful it has been! It is a day that will stand apart in
+the history of my life,’ answered Daphne, slipping her hand
+lovingly through her sister’s arm.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a privileged nature to be so easily made happy!’
+said Gerald, with a palpable sneer.</p>
+
+<p>People are apt to let slip society’s mask in such a moment,
+on a dark road shut in by mountain and wood, after a long and
+thoughtful silence, forgetting that feeling is audible in the
+darkness, though faces are hidden, and the clouded brow or the
+quiver of the lip is invisible.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring had been thinking deeply during the hillside
+walk and the homeward drive, touched inexpressibly by Madoline’s
+affection, and trying as honestly as was possible to a
+character which was not given to mental or moral effort—trying
+to face a future clouded over with fears. Could he ever be
+again as he had been, Madoline’s true lover? This was the
+question which he asked himself, coming down the hill in the
+glory of the evening light, a little aloof from the other three.
+His honour and reverence for her were in nowise lessened by
+that fatal passion which had changed the current of his life.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</span>
+He knew that of all women he had ever met she was the noblest
+and the best; that, with her, life would be lifted above the
+sordid, vulgar level of selfish pleasures and sensual indulgences;
+that, as her husband, he could not fail to become in somewise
+useful to his species, to win some measure of renown, and to
+leave a name behind him that would sound sweet in the ears of
+generations to come. He could imagine her in the riper beauty
+of matronhood, the mother of his children, training up his sons
+to tread the loftier paths of life, rearing his daughters in an
+atmosphere of purity and love. He pictured her at the head
+of his household; he told himself that with such a wife he must
+be an idiot if he missed happiness. And then he looked with
+gloomy despairing eyes at the other side of the question, and
+tried to realise what his life would be with the butterfly being
+who had crept into his heart and made herself its empress.</p>
+
+<p>As well as he knew Lina’s perfection did he know Daphne’s
+faultiness. She was frivolous, selfish, shallow, capricious,
+vehement. Yes, but he loved her. She had no higher idea of
+this world than as a place made exquisitely beautiful in order
+that she might be happy in it; nor of her fellow-creatures
+than as persons provided to minister to her pleasures; nor of
+the future beyond life than as a vague misty something which
+had better not be thought about; nor of duty, but as a word
+found in the Church Catechism, and which one might banish
+from one’s mind after one’s confirmation. Yes, but he loved
+her. Her faultiness did not lessen his love by the weight of a
+grain of thistledown. He yearned to take her to his heart,
+faulty as she was, and cherish her there for ever. He longed
+to spend the rest of his days with her, and it seemed to him
+that life would be worthless without her. She might prove a
+silly wife, a careless mother. Yes, but he loved her. For him
+she was just the one most exquisite thing in creation, the one
+supreme necessity of his soul.</p>
+
+<p>‘“<i lang="la" xml:lang="la">Animæ dimidium meæ.</i>” Yes, that is what she is,’ he said
+to himself as he sat in the summer darkness, with dreamy
+eyes looking upward to the lonely melancholy hills, where huge
+arollas of a thousand years’ growth spread their black branches
+against the snow-line just above them. What a desolate
+world it looked in the gathering gloom!—only a few solitary
+stars gleaming in the infinite remoteness of the sky, the moon
+not yet risen above yonder snowy battlements.</p>
+
+<p>It was past nine o’clock when they drove into the shrubberied
+approach to the Jungfraublich. The hotel looked dazzling
+after the obscurity of the valley. Daphne would have
+liked to dash into the billiard-room and challenge her lover
+to a game; but, since it was impossible for a young lady to
+play at a public table, she went upstairs to the sitting-room on
+the first floor, where Sir Vernon was waiting for them, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</span>
+where there was a table spread with tea, cold chickens, and
+rolls and honey. Lina sat by her father, telling him the history
+of their day, and hearing all he had to say about his letters
+and papers. Edgar was in tremendous spirits, and inclined
+to make fun of the queer little village on the edge of everlasting
+snows; Daphne was talkative; Sir Vernon was gracious.
+It was only Gerald Goring who bore no part in the
+conversation. He looked worn and wearied with the day’s
+work, and yet it had been nothing for an Alpine climber; a
+mere constitutional walk, barely enough to keep a man in
+training. When tea was over he retired to the balcony, and
+sat there, smoking cigarettes and watching the moon climb
+the dark slopes of heaven; while the others looked over
+newly-arrived papers and periodicals, and discussed to-morrow’s
+trip to Grindelwald and the glaciers.</p>
+
+<p>The morning came, as fair and fresh a dawn as ever peeped
+shyly across the edge of the Alps, but Gerald, watching the slow
+kindling of that rosy glow after a sleepless night, greeted the
+new day with no thanksgiving. To him, in his present frame of
+mind, it would have seemed a good thing if that day had never
+dawned; if this planet Earth had dropped out of its place in the
+starry procession, and gone down to darkness and chaos, like a
+torch burnt out. He rose with that inexorable sun, which pursues
+his course with so little regard for the griefs and perplexities
+of humanity, and was out in the dewy woods above the
+hotel before civilised people were stirring. Anything was better
+than to lie on a sleepless couch staring at the light. Here,
+moving about among the dark pine-stems, treading the narrow
+tracks, shifting his point of view at every turn in the path, life
+was less intolerable. He could think better—his brain was
+clearer—his pulse less feverish.</p>
+
+<p>‘What was he to do?’ he asked himself helplessly. What
+did Wisdom counsel? What did Honour urge? Surely about
+this latter voice there could be no question. Honour would
+have him be true to Madoline, at any sacrifice of his own feelings.
+Duty was plain enough here. He had pledged himself
+to her by every bond which honest men hold sacred. He must
+keep his word.</p>
+
+<p>‘But if we are both miserable for life?’ he asked himself.
+‘Can she be happy if I am wretched? And what charm has
+existence for me without Daphne?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You must forget Daphne,’ urged Duty; ‘your first and
+nobler love must obtain the mastery. You must pluck this idle
+weed, this mere caprice, out of your heart.’</p>
+
+<p>He told himself that the thing was to be done and he would
+try honestly to do it. He would steel himself against Daphne’s
+wiles. Did not Ulysses pluck himself away from the enchantress’s
+fatal island, wrench himself out of her very web, and get<span class="pagenum" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</span>
+home to Ithaca sound in body and mind, and live happy ever
+afterwards with his faithful Penelope? Or at least this is the
+popular idea of Ulysses, in spite of those breathings of slander
+which make the Circe episode something more than Platonic.
+What nobler image can life give than that of a faithful lover,
+a loyal husband, tempted and yet true? Nor did poor little
+Daphne go out of her way to exercise Circean arts. She
+charmed as the flowers charm, innocently and unconsciously.
+She was no Becky Sharp, weaving a subtle web out of people’s
+looks and smiles, drooping lashes, lifted eyelids, the arrowy
+gleams of fatal green eyes. She wanted to be faithful to her
+lover, and loyal to her sister. Her letter had been straight and
+true. If he sinned, he sinned of his own accord, and had no
+such excuses as Adam used against the partner God had given
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He wandered about restlessly, in an utterly purposeless
+way, till it was time to go back to the seven o’clock breakfast.
+He would have liked to start alone for the shining slate mountain
+yonder, to spend the day there in a sultry solitude, lying
+on his back and staring up at the unfathomable blue, smoking
+a little, reading Heine a little—Heine’s ballad-book had been
+his gospel of late—idling away the empty day, and growing wiser
+and better in solitude. But he was pledged to go in beaten tracks;
+to go and eat and drink at The Bear, and gaze at the lower glacier,
+like a Cook’s tourist, and be faintly interested in the coachman’s
+exposition of the view, and be blandly tolerant of girls
+selling edelweiss, and boys waking the echoes with Alpine horns,
+and all the conventional features of that exquisite drive from
+Interlaken to Grindelwald.</p>
+
+<p>However much he might affect to despise the familiar route,
+he could not deny the beauty of the landscape by-and-by, when
+they were all seated in the carriage and had crossed the Lutschine
+for the first time, and were climbing slowly up the raised
+road above the river. It was a brilliant morning, the wooded
+hills steeped in sunlight and balmy summer air; the tender green
+of the young shoots showing bright against the sombre darkness
+of the everlasting pines; water rushing down the hillsides every
+here and there, sometimes a torrent, sometimes a fine thread
+like spun glass, dropping from crag to crag. The two young
+men got out of the carriage and walked up the hills; the valley
+through which the road wound was exquisitely verdant—a scene
+of pastoral beauty, fertile, richly wooded, but passing lonely.
+Daphne sorely missed the dappled kine which relieve and animate
+a Warwickshire landscape.</p>
+
+<p>‘What in Heaven’s name has become of the cattle?’ she
+exclaimed. ‘Here are meadows, and homesteads, and gardens,
+and orchards, but not a living object in the landscape. I thought
+Switzerland swarmed with cows, and was musical with cowbells.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</span>
+And where is the chorus of herdsmen singing the “<em>Ranz
+des Vaches</em>?”’</p>
+
+<p>‘Perhaps there has been an outbreak of foot-and-mouth
+disease, and the cows have all been condemned,’ speculated
+Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald explained that the cattle and their keepers had all
+gone up into the higher regions to crop the summer herbage.</p>
+
+<p>‘And that accounts for this green and silent valley,’ said
+Daphne. ‘It is rather a romantic idea; but I should have liked
+to see the cattle all the same. I adore cows. I think a Jersey
+cow, with her stag-like head and eyes, is almost the loveliest
+thing in creation.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You shall have a herd of them at Hawksyard,’ exclaimed
+Edgar eagerly; ‘and I will build you a Swiss cowhouse at the
+end of the walnut walk.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank you so much,’ said Daphne, with a faint smile, ‘but
+I was thinking of them only in the abstract.’</p>
+
+<p>There were times when any allusion to Hawksyard and the
+future irritated her like the sting of a summer insect.</p>
+
+<p>Children appeared at every turn of the circuitous road.
+Here a sickly, large-eyed girl offered a handful of dingy edelweiss;
+there an unkempt ill-fed boy ran beside the horses,
+flapping off the flies with a leafy branch of ash or walnut; anon
+appeared the mountain musician playing his plaintive strain
+upon the native horn, and waking melancholiest echoes amid
+the solemn hills. The road crossed the river several times, over
+covered bridges, wooden arcades, which made a picturesque bit
+in the landscape, a pleasant lounging place too, on such a summer
+morning. But there seemed to be nobody about save the
+fly-flapping boys, and women and children offering new milk or
+the everlasting edelweiss.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first time Daphne had seen the little velvety white
+flower, and she was keenly interested in it.</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor little colourless ice-blossom, so pale and dull-looking,
+like a life without joy or variety!’ she said. ‘They say that it
+grows under the snow. How nice it would be to go and hunt
+for it oneself! Please give the children plenty of money, Edgar.’
+And Mr. Turchill, whose pockets were always full of loose Helvetian
+coins—leaden sous and dingy-looking half-francs—scattered
+his largesse among the natives with a liberality rare in
+modern excursionists.</p>
+
+<p>Half-way up the hill they came to a rustic restaurant, where
+the horses stopped to blow, and where the coachman invited the
+ladies to go and see a tame chamois in a little shed at the back
+of the house.</p>
+
+<p>‘He will be the first of his race I have seen,’ said Daphne,
+‘though in Manfred’s time this part of the country seems to
+have been overrun by them.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</span></p>
+
+<p>They went through the restaurant kitchen to the shed behind
+it, to see the four-footed mountaineer. He was a melancholy
+little animal, altogether a shabby specimen of the chamois tribe,
+and looked sadly forlorn in his narrow den. One of his horns
+had been broken off, perhaps in the struggles that attended his
+capture.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a painful sight,’ said Daphne, turning away with a
+sigh.</p>
+
+<p>She would have given all her pocket-money to set the chamois
+free; but he was one of the attractions of the house, and
+could not have been easily ransomed.</p>
+
+<p>And now again across the Black Lutschine, by another
+covered bridge, and up the steep winding road through a narrow
+gorge in the hills, until the cleft widens, and the Grindelwald
+valley opens before them in all its glory, ringed round with
+mountains, the Great Eiger standing boldly out in front of them,
+with broad patches of snow on his dark stony front, behind a
+bold edge of pine-clad hill. There is unspeakable grandeur in
+that bleak and rugged mountain rising above the verdure and
+beauty of the nearer hills.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne clasped her hands in unalloyed delight.</p>
+
+<p>‘It would be worth while coming to Switzerland if it were
+only for this,’ she exclaimed; ‘yet I am tortured by the idea of
+all the mountain-passes, glaciers, and waterfalls that we are not
+going to see. I have a great mind to throw away my Baedeker.
+He makes me positively miserable with suggestions that I can’t
+carry out.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You will be able to see all you care about next year,’ said
+Edgar, ‘when you and I are free to go where we like. I believe
+it will be always where <em>you</em> like.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Next year seems half a century off,’ she answered carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>Their journey was nearly done. The carriage went down into
+the valley, then climbed another hill, and they had paused the
+outskirts of the village of Grindelwald, and were drawing up in
+the garden in front of the Bear Hotel. Very full of life and
+bustle was the inn garden on this bright summer morning.
+Tourists without number standing about, or sitting under the
+verandah, Americans, Germans, English, French, all full of life
+and enjoyment; some starting with their alpenstocks, intent on
+pedestrian excursions; ladies and sedentary middle-aged gentlemen
+being hoisted on to mules; carriages driving in; horses
+being fed and cleaned; a Babel of languages, a perpetual moving
+in and out.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goring ordered a slight refection of wine and coffee, rolls
+and honey, to be brought to a pleasant spot under the verandah,
+at a point where the view across the deep valley to the hills
+beyond was widest and grandest. Here they rested themselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</span>
+a little before starting on foot for the lower glacier. Both
+Madoline and Daphne were in favour of walking.</p>
+
+<p>‘I went on a mule when I was here with my father,’ said
+Lina, ‘and I remember thinking how much I should have preferred
+being free to choose my own path.’</p>
+
+<p>It was a lovely walk, so soon as they were clear of the
+hotels and boarding-houses, and the scattered wooden <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i> of
+the village, just such a ramble as Daphne loved; a narrow footpath
+winding up and down a verdant hillside—here a garden,
+and there an orchard—funny little cottages and cottage-gardens
+perched anyhow on slopes and angles of the road; a rustic
+bridge across the rocky bed of a river; and there in front of
+them the glacier—a mass of corrugated ice lying on a steep
+slope between two mountains—shining, beautiful, like a pale
+sapphire. They loitered as much as they pleased by the wayside,
+Daphne straying here and there as her fancy led her—a
+restless, birdlike creature, almost seeming to have wings, so
+lightly did she flutter from hillock to crag, so airy was the step
+with which she skimmed along the narrow rocky pathway, beaten
+by the feet of so many travellers. They spent a good deal of
+time in the immediate neighbourhood of the glacier, ‘doing it
+thoroughly,’ as Edgar remarked afterwards, with a satisfied air;
+and then they went quietly back to The Bear, and dined in a
+corner of the big, barren dining-room, and drove back to Interlaken
+in the summer dusk, Gerald almost as silent as he had
+been the night before during the much shorter drive from Lauterbrunnen.</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid it bores you to go over the ground you know so
+well,’ said Madoline, grieved at her lover’s silence, which looked
+like depression, or mental weariness.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; the country is too lovely, one could hardly tire of it,’
+he answered; ‘but don’t you think it intensely melancholy?
+There is something in the silence and darkness of these hills
+which fills my soul with gloom. Even the lights scattered about
+here and there are so remote and so few that they only serve to
+intensify the solitude. So long as sunlight and shadow give life
+and motion to the scene it is gay enough; but with nightfall
+one finds out all at once how desolate it is.’</p>
+
+<p>There was more excursionising next day, and again on the
+next; then came Sunday morning and church, and then a walk
+through the pine-woods to see some athletic sports that were
+held in a green basin which made a splendid amphitheatre, round
+whose grassy sides the audience sat picturesquely grouped on the
+velvet sward. On this day the young women came out in all the
+glory of their canton costume—snowy habit-shirts and black
+velvet bodices, silver chains pendent from their shoulders, silver
+daggers or arrows thrust through their plaited hair, long silk
+aprons of brightest colours—a costume which gave new gaiety<span class="pagenum" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</span>
+to the landscape. Then in the evening there was a concert at
+the little conversation-house in the walnut avenue, a concert so
+crowded by native and foreigner that there was never an empty
+seat in the verandah, and the waiters were at their wits’ ends to
+keep everyone supplied with tea and coffee, lemonade and wine.
+After the concert there were fireworks, coloured lights to glorify
+the fountains—almost the gayest, brightest scene that Daphne’s
+eyes had ever looked upon. Then, when Bengal lights and
+rockets had faded and vanished into the summer night, they
+walked quietly back to the hotel under a starry sky.</p>
+
+<p>‘I believe Daphne likes Bengal lights better than stars,’ said
+Gerald mockingly, as he gave Madoline his arm, and went on
+with her in advance of the others, across a field that lay on the
+other side of the walnut walk.</p>
+
+<p>‘You may believe anything you like of Daphne’s bad taste
+and general idiocy,’ the girl retorted; and Lina was distressed
+at thinking how disagreeable these two, whom she would have
+had so affectionately attached, always were to each other.</p>
+
+<p>And all the while Gerald Goring was wondering what he
+was to do with his life—whether it were possible to break the
+chain which bound him, that golden chain which had once been
+his chief glory—whether it were possible to reconcile honour
+and love.</p>
+
+<p>They left Interlaken next morning, and went straight
+through to the little station at Montreux. Daphne, who had
+pored over her Baedeker till she fancied that she knew every
+inch of Switzerland, was deeply grieved at not being able to go
+on to Lucerne and the Rigi, Flüelen, and all the Tell district;
+but Sir Vernon would go no farther than Interlaken. He considered
+that he had made a sufficient sacrifice of his own comfort
+already for his younger daughter’s pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hate moving about, and I detest hotels,’ he said; ‘I am
+yearning for the quiet of my own house.’</p>
+
+<p>After this no more could be said. Daphne gave herself up
+to silent contemplation of the Jungfrau range throughout the
+journey, by boat and rail, hardly taking her eyes from those
+snowy peaks till they melted from her view, fading ghostlike in
+the blue ether.</p>
+
+<p>‘They seem to be a part of my life,’ she said, as she turned
+from the carriage window with a regretful sigh; ‘I cannot bear
+to think that I have seen the last of them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Only for this year,’ answered Edgar cheerily, not caring
+much for mountains in the abstract, but ready to admire anything
+that Daphne loved. ‘It is such an easy matter to come
+to Switzerland nowadays. The Jungfrau is as accessible as
+Brighton Pier.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘THER WAS NO WIGHT, TO WHOM SHE DURSTE PLAIN.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">They</span> had been at Montreux more than a week, and it
+seemed to Daphne as if she had lived half her life on the shore
+of the beautiful lake, with the snowy summit of the Dent du
+Midi rising yonder in its inaccessible grandeur, above the fertile
+hills of the foreground, those precipitous green slopes, where
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlets</i> and farms were dotted about picturesquely in positions
+that would have seemed perilous for birds’ nests.</p>
+
+<p>The villa was charming; a white-walled <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">château</i> all plate-glass
+windows, verandahs, balconies, brightened from roof to
+basement by crimson and white Spanish blinds. The rooms
+were prettily furnished in a foreign style—commodes, cabinets,
+clocks, candelabra, and Louis Quatorze chairs of a painfully
+upright architecture. To these Sir Vernon had added several
+easy-chairs and couches of the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">pouf</i> species, hired from an upholsterer
+at Geneva. Photographs in velvet or ivory frames, books,
+work-baskets, easels, and five-o’clock tea-tables, brought from
+South Hill, gave a home-like air to the rooms; and a profusion
+of the loveliest flowers, exquisitely arranged, told of Madoline’s
+presence.</p>
+
+<p>There was a delicious garden sloping down to the lake,
+whose gently-curving shore made here a lovely bay; a garden
+in which roses grew as they only grow in the neighbourhood of
+water. There were summer-houses of the airiest construction;
+trellised walks, rose-shaded; a parterre of carefully-chosen
+flowers, with a fountain in the centre; and the blue bright water
+at the edge of the lawn.</p>
+
+<p>Here Daphne had established her boat, a light skiff with a
+felucca sail and a striped awning, to be used at pleasure; a boat
+which, seen flitting across the lake in the sunshine, looked like
+a swallow. There was a capital boat-house at a corner of the
+lawn, wooden and delightfully Swiss, with balconies fronting
+the lake, and an upper room in which one could take one’s pleasure,
+sketching, writing, reading, tea-drinking. The weather
+had been peerless since their arrival at Montreux; and Madoline
+and Daphne spent the greater part of their lives out of doors.
+They were always together, Daphne rarely leaving the
+shelter of her sister’s wing. She had become amazingly industrious,
+and had begun a tremendous piece of work in crewels,
+neither more nor less than a set of curtain-borderings for the
+drawing-room at Hawksyard. Vainly had Madoline entreated
+her to begin with an antimacassar or a fender-stool, some undertaking
+which would demand but a reasonable exercise of patience
+and perseverance. Daphne would hear of no work that was not
+gigantic.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think Cheops would ever have been famous if he
+had begun to make pyramids on a small scale?’ she asked.
+‘He would have exhausted his interest in the idea, frittered
+away his enthusiasm upon trifles. How much wiser it was in
+him to make a dash at something big while his fancy was at
+a white heat! If I don’t embroider a set of curtains I’ll do
+nothing.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Well, dearest, you must follow your own fancy,’ answered
+Lina gently; ‘but I’m afraid your life will be a history of great
+beginnings.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne began with extraordinary industry upon a bold
+pattern of sunflowers and acanthus leaves, huge sunflowers,
+huge foliage, on a Pompeian-red ground. Whenever she was not
+in her boat, skimming about the lake, she was toiling at a leaf
+or a sunflower, sitting on a cushion at Lina’s feet, the sunny
+head bent over her work, the slim white fingers moving busily,
+the dark brows knitted, in the intensity of her occupation. She
+was always intent upon finishing a leaf, or a stalk, or a petal,
+or on realising the grand effect of a completed flower. She
+would sit till the last available moment before dinner, rushing
+off to dress in a frantic hurry, and reappearing just as the
+subdued announcement of dinner was being breathed into Sir
+Vernon’s ear. Edgar was filled with delight to see her so occupied.
+It seemed to him a pledge of future domesticity.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is so sweet to see you working for our home,’ he said
+one afternoon, seated on the grass at her feet, and placidly
+watching every stitch.</p>
+
+<p>‘Eh?’ she said, looking up in half-surprise, being much more
+interested in the sunflowers for their own sakes than in their
+future relation to the old Warwickshire Grange. ‘Oh yes, to
+be sure. I hope I shall finish the curtains; but it is a dreadful
+long way to look forward. There will be three hundred and
+fifty-five sunflowers. I have done one and a half. That leaves
+just three hundred and fifty-three and a half to do. I rather
+wish it were the other way.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Beginning to flag already?’ said Lina, who was sketching
+a little bit of the mountain landscape on the other side of the
+lake, a bold effect of sun and shadow.</p>
+
+<p>‘Not the least in the world,’ cried Daphne; ‘only I do so
+long to see the effect of the curtains when they are finished.
+It will be stupendous. But do you know, Edgar, I am afraid
+your mother will detest them. One requires to be educated
+up to sunflowers; and Mrs. Turchill belongs to that degraded
+period of art in which people could see beauty in roses and lilies.’</p>
+
+<p>‘One can hardly look back upon those dark ages without
+a shudder,’ said Gerald Goring, stretched on a rustic bench close
+at hand, looking up at the blue sky, an image of purposeless
+idleness. ‘Thank Providence we have emerged from the age<span class="pagenum" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</span>
+of curves into the age of angles—from the Hogarthian to the
+Burne-Jonesian ideal of beauty.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There was a period in my own life when I had not awakened
+to the loveliness of the sunflower,’ said Daphne gravely.
+‘I know the first time I was introduced to one in crewel-work
+I thought it hideous; but since I have known Tadema’s pictures
+I am another creature. Yet I doubt if, even in my
+regenerate state, a garden all sunflowers would be quite satisfactory.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You would require the Roman atmosphere, classic busts
+and columns, Tyrian-dyed draperies, and everybody dressed in
+the straight-down Roman fashion,’ replied Gerald languidly.
+‘No doubt Poppæa was fond of sunflowers; and I daresay they
+grew in that royal garden where Messalina held such high jinks
+that time her imperial husband came home unexpectedly and
+somewhat disturbed the harmony of the evening.’</p>
+
+<p>It was altogether an idle kind of life which they were leading
+just now at Montreux. During the first week Edgar and
+Daphne had excursionised a little upon the nearest hillsides in
+the early morning before breakfast; but lovely as were the
+chestnut-woods and the limpid streamlets gushing out of their
+rocky beds and dripping into stone troughs fringed with delicate
+ferns, exquisite as was the morning air, and the fairy picture of
+the lake below them, developing some new charm with every
+hundred yards of the ascent, Daphne soon wearied of these
+morning rambles, and seemed glad to forego them.</p>
+
+<p>‘The weather is getting horribly oppressive,’ she said, ‘or
+perhaps I am not quite so strong as I used to be. I would rather
+sit in the garden and amuse myself more lazily.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You must not pretend to be an invalid,’ said Edgar cheerily;
+‘come now, Daphne: why, there are not many girls can handle
+a pair of sculls as you do.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I didn’t say I was an invalid. In my boat I feel in my
+element, but listlessly creeping about these hills wearies me to
+death.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very different from me,’ answered Edgar reproachfully.
+‘Your company is always enough for my happiness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you shall have as much of my company as you please
+in the garden or on the lake. But pray let us be idle while we
+can. When Aunt Rhoda arrives we shall be goaded to all kinds
+of excursionising, dragged up every hill in the district.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you wanted to climb mountains?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, mountains; Mont Blanc, or the Matterhorn, or Monte
+Rosa—anything respectable. But to exhaust one’s energy in
+scaling green banks! Why, in Wales they would call the Col
+du Jaman a bank. However, when Aunt Rhoda arrive I shall
+be equal to the effort. Of course we shall have to do Chillon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I thought you were so interested in Chillon.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, as an image in my mind. I love to gaze at its dark
+towers from the distance, to send my fancies back to the
+Middle Ages, penetrate the gloomy prison and keep the captives
+company—but to go over the cells formally, in the midst
+of a little herd of tourists, staring over each other’s shoulders,
+and treading upon each other’s toes—to be shown by a snuffy
+old custodian the ring to which Bonnivard was chained, the
+grating out of which he could see the “little isle that in his
+very face did smile”—that is a kind of thing which I absolutely
+abhor.’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers had written to her brother, informing him that
+as she had been all her life longing for a glimpse of Swiss scenery,
+and that as so favourable an opportunity had now presented
+itself for the gratification of that desire, she had made up her
+mind to come straight to Montreux by herself.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is a tremendous undertaking for one who has travelled
+so little,’ she wrote; ‘for you know, dear Vernon, how my devotion
+to Lina and your interests kept me a prisoner at South Hill
+during those years in which I should naturally have been seeing
+all that is worth seeing in this beautiful world. It is an awful
+idea to travel all the way from Warwickshire to Lake Leman,
+with only a maid, but I feel that this is a golden opportunity
+which must not be lost. To be in Switzerland with you and
+dearest Lina will be a delight, the memory of which will endure
+all my life. It is quite hopeless to suppose that dear Marmaduke
+can ever travel with me beyond Cheltenham, or Bath, or Torquay.
+His health and his settled habits both forbid the thought.
+Why, then, should I not take advantage of your being in
+Switzerland to realise a long-cherished wish? I shall be no
+trouble to you: I do not ask you even to receive me under your
+roof, unless indeed you happen to have a spare room or two at
+your disposal. You can make arrangements for me and my
+maid to live <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en pension</i> at one of those excellent hotels which I
+am told abound on the banks of the lake, and I can spend all
+my days with you without feeling myself either a burden or an
+expense.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What are we to do, Lina?’ asked Sir Vernon, when his
+elder daughter had read the letter; ‘your aunt will be a terrible
+bore in any case, but I suppose she will be a little less of a nuisance
+if we put her out of the house.’</p>
+
+<p>‘There are three spare rooms,’ said Lina. ‘It would be
+rather inhospitable to send her to an hotel—if she will not be
+any trouble to you, dear father——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh, she will be no trouble to me,’ said Sir Vernon. ‘I’ll
+take care of that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then I think you had better let me write and ask her to
+stay with us.’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Ask her!’ quoth Sir Vernon, ‘egad, she has asked herself.’</p>
+
+<p>The letter was written, and by return of post there came a
+gushing reply, announcing that Mrs. Ferrers had broken the
+intelligence of her departure to dear Marmaduke, who had borne
+the blow better than might have been expected, and who was
+amiably resigned to the loss of his wife’s society during the
+ensuing six weeks. Is not a modern Anglican cleric bound to
+imitate in somewise the example of the early Christian martyrs?
+Fire or sword he is not called upon to suffer, nor to fight with
+wild beasts in the arena; but these small domestic deprivations
+are a scourge of the flesh, which tend to exercise his heroic
+temper.</p>
+
+<p>‘Todd,’ said Marmaduke, in a fat and unctuous voice, ‘you
+must take particular care of me while your mistress is away.
+You know what I like, Todd, and you must make sure that I
+have it.’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers arrived one sunny afternoon, with three Saratoga
+trunks, and the newest things in sunshades. She had a
+generally exhausted air after her journey, and declared that she
+seemed to have been travelling since the beginning of the world.</p>
+
+<p>‘The dust, the heat, the glare between Paris and Dijon I can
+never describe,’ she protested as she sank into the most luxurious
+of the easy-chairs, which her eagle eye had detected at the first
+glance.</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t try,’ said Gerald, ‘we went through it all ourselves.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was something too dreadful,’ murmured Aunt Rhoda,
+looking so cool and ladylike in her pale-gray cashmere gown and
+flounced sicilienne petticoat, that it was difficult to believe she
+had ever been a victim to dust and heat.</p>
+
+<p>She was refreshed with tea and bread and butter, and looked
+round her with placid satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is really very sweet,’ she murmured. ‘This villa reminds
+me so much of the Fothergills’ place just above Teddington
+Lock—the lawn—the flower-beds—everything. But, do you know,
+Switzerland is not quite so Swiss as I expected to find it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That was just what Daphne said,’ answered Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘Did she really?’ murmured Aunt Rhoda, looking across at
+Daphne, who was sitting idly by the low tea-table. Mrs. Ferrers
+felt a little vexed with herself at being convicted of coinciding
+with Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>‘I suppose it is inevitable,’ she said, with a lofty air, ‘that
+a place of which one has dreamed all one’s life, which one has
+pictured to oneself in all the brightest colours of one’s own
+mind and fancy, should be just a little disappointing. It was
+tiresome to be told at Geneva that Mont Blanc had not been
+seen for weeks, and it was provoking to find the cabman horribly<span class="pagenum" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</span>
+indifferent about Rousseau—for, of course, I made a point of
+going to see his house.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And did you go to Ferney?’ asked Daphne eagerly. ‘Isn’t
+it pretty?’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Daphne, you forget that I am a clergyman’s wife,’
+said Mrs. Ferrers, with dignity. ‘Do you suppose that I would
+worship at the shrine of a man who made a mock of religion?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Not of religion,’ muttered Gerald, ‘but of priestcraft.’</p>
+
+<p>‘But you were interested about Rousseau,’ said Daphne. ‘I
+thought they were both wicked men—that there was nothing to
+choose between them.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Voltaire’s infidelity was more notorious,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers;
+‘I could never have told Marmaduke that I visited the house of
+an avowed——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Deist,’ interjected Gerald.</p>
+
+<p>Hard pressed, Mrs. Ferrers was constrained to admit that she
+had never read a line written by either Voltaire or Rousseau, and
+that she had only a kind of dictionary idea of the two men, so
+vague that their images might at any moment become confounded
+in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>When she had reposed a little after her journey, and had
+seen the contents of the Saratoga trunks arranged in wardrobe
+and drawers, Aunt Rhoda showed herself a most ardent votary
+of the picturesque. She had a volume of Byron in her hand all
+day, and quoted his description of Leman and Chillon in a way
+that was almost as exasperating as the torture inflicted by a
+professional punster. She insisted upon being taken to Chillon
+on the morning after her arrival. She made Gerald organise an
+excursion from Evian to the mountain village above, at the foot
+of the Dent d’Oche, for the following day. She made them
+take her to the Rochers de Naye, to the Gorge du Chauderon;
+to Lausanne by steamer one day, to Nyon another day. She
+was always exploring the guide-books in search of excursions
+that could be managed between sunrise and sundown.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon, having settled himself in his study at Montreux,
+with books and papers about him, was just as much dependent
+for his comfort and happiness upon Lina’s society as ever he
+had been at South Hill. It was out of the question that a
+daughter so unselfish and devoted could leave her invalid father
+day after day. Thus it happened that Madoline in a manner
+dropped out of the excursionising party. Gerald could not be
+dispensed with—though he more than once declared in favour
+of staying at home—for nobody else was familiar with those
+shores, and Mrs. Ferrers protested that it would be impossible to
+get on without him.</p>
+
+<p>‘You all have your Baedekers,’ he argued, ‘and you are only
+going over beaten tracks. What more can you want?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Beaten tracks!’ exclaimed Aunt Rhoda indignantly. ‘I’m<span class="pagenum" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</span>
+sure those pathways you took us up yesterday on the way to
+the Dent d’Oche had never been trodden upon except by the
+cows. And I hate groping about with my nose in a guide-book.
+One always misses the things best worth seeing. Do you think
+we could get on without him, Daphne?’ she asked in conclusion,
+appealing to her younger niece, to whom she had been unusually
+amiable ever since her arrival.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think we might manage without Mr. Goring,’ Daphne
+answered gravely, with never a glance at Gerald. She had
+scrupulously avoided all direct association with him of late.
+‘Edgar and I are getting to know Switzerland and Swiss ways
+wonderfully well.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you ever been to the Gorge du Chauderon?’ asked
+Aunt Rhoda.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne confessed that this particular locality was unknown
+to her. She did not even know what the Gorge was, except
+that it sounded, in a general way, like a glen or ravine.</p>
+
+<p>‘Then how can you talk such arrant nonsense?’ demanded
+her aunt contemptuously. ‘What good could you or Edgar be
+in a place that neither of you have ever seen in your lives?
+You can’t know the proper way to get to it, or the safest way
+to get away from it. We should all tumble over some hidden
+precipice, and break our necks.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Baedeker doesn’t say anything about precipices,’ said
+Daphne, with her eyes on that authority.</p>
+
+<p>‘Baedeker thinks no more of precipices than I think of a
+country lane,’ answered Aunt Rhoda.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sure Lina would like to have Mr. Goring at home
+sometimes,’ said Daphne. Gerald had strolled out into the garden
+while they talked. ‘Could we not get a guide?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I detest guides,’ replied her aunt, who knew that those
+guardians of the strangers’ safety were expensive, and fancied
+she might have to pay her share of the cost. ‘Gerald may just
+as well be with us as moping here. I know what my brother is,
+and that he will keep Lina dancing attendance upon him all day
+long.’</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goring went with them everywhere, and seemed nothing
+loth to labour in their service. He knew the ground thoroughly,
+and led them over it in a quiet leisurely way, unknown to the
+average tourist, who goes everywhere in a scamper, and returns
+to his native land with his mind full of confused memories. He
+had to put up with a great deal of Aunt Rhoda’s society during
+all these excursions, and was gratified with lengthy confidences
+from that lady; for Daphne was loyal to her faithful lover, and
+walked with him and talked with him, and gave him as much of
+her company as was possible. She talked of Hawksyard and her
+future mother-in-law, of the tenants, and the villagers, the
+horses and dogs. She talked of hunting and shooting, of everything<span class="pagenum" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</span>
+which most interested her lover; and then she went home
+in the evening so weary and worn out and heart-sick that she
+was glad to sit quietly in the verandah after dinner, petting a
+tawny St. Bernard dog called Monk, a gigantic animal, who
+belonged to the house, and who had attached himself to Daphne
+from her first coming with a warm regard. He was her sole
+companion very often in her boating excursions, when she went
+roaming about the lake in her light skiff, enjoying all the loveliness
+of the scene, as she could only enjoy it, in perfect solitude.</p>
+
+<p>‘Surely it is hardly safe for that child to go about without a
+boatman,’ exclaimed Mrs. Ferrers, as she stood at the open
+window of her brother’s study, watching the swallow-sail as it
+flitted across the sunlit ripples, bending to every movement of
+the water. ‘Vernon, do you know that the lake is over a thousand
+feet deep?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think the depth of water makes any difference,’
+replied Sir Vernon calmly. ‘The Avon is deep enough to drown
+her; yet we never troubled ourselves about her aquatic amusements
+in Warwickshire. I have Turchill’s assurance that she
+is perfect mistress of her boat, and I think that ought to be
+enough.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Of course if you are satisfied I ought to be,’ said Mrs. Ferrers,
+with her ladylike shrug; ‘but I can only say that if I had
+a daughter I should not encourage her in a taste for boating.
+In the first place, because I cannot dispossess my mind of the
+idea of danger; and in the second, because I consider such an
+amusement revoltingly masculine. Daphne’s hands are ever so
+much wider since she began to row. I was horrified the other
+day at discovering that she wears six-and-a-half gloves.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne liked those quiet mornings on the lake, or a ramble
+among vineyards or orchards, with Monk for her sole companion,
+better than the formal pilgrimages to some scene made
+famous by the guide-books. Those excursions with her aunt
+and Mr. Goring and Edgar had become passing wearisome. The
+strain upon her spirits was too great. The desire to appear gay
+and happy and at ease exhausted her. The effort to banish
+thought and memory, and to take a rapturous pleasure in the
+beauty of a picturesque scene, or the glory of a summer sky, was
+becoming daily more severe. To talk twaddle with Edgar, to
+smile in his face, with that gnawing pain, that passion of longing
+and regret always troubling her soul, was a slow torture
+which she began to think must sooner or later be mortal.</p>
+
+<p>‘Can I go on living like this for ever?’ she asked herself, after
+one of those endless summer days, when, in the same boat, in
+the same carriage with Gerald Goring, lunching at the same inn,
+admiring the same views, treading the same narrow paths or
+perilous wooden footbridges, she had yet contrived to keep herself
+aloof from him. ‘Can I always go on acting a part—pretending<span class="pagenum" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</span>
+to be true when I am false to the core of my wicked
+heart, pretending to be happy when I am miserable?’</p>
+
+<p>The mountains and the lake were beginning to lose something
+of their enchantment, something of their power to lift her
+out of herself and to make her forget human sorrow amidst the
+immensities of Nature. She did not love them less as they grew
+familiar, nay, her love increased with her knowledge; but the
+distraction diminished. She could think of herself and her own
+sorrow now, under the walls of Chillon, just as keenly as in the
+elm walk in Stratford churchyard. The wide lake glittering in
+the morning sun was no longer a magical picture, before which
+every thought of self faded. Gliding dreamily along the blue
+water she gave herself up to a sadness that was half bitter, half
+sweet; bitter, because she knew that her life was to be spent
+apart from Gerald Goring; sweet, because she was so certain of his
+love. He told her of it every day, however carefully she avoided
+all direct association with him: told her by veiled words, by
+stolen looks, by that despondency and gloom which hung about
+him like a cloud. Love has a hundred subtle ways of revealing
+itself. A fatal passion needs not to be expounded in the preachments
+of a St. Preux, in the moral lectures and intellectual
+flights of a Julie. Briefer and more direct is the language of an
+unhappy love. It reveals itself unawares; it escapes from the
+soul unconsciously, as the perfume from the rose.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was very thankful when her aunt’s active and insatiable
+spirit was fain to subside into repose; not because Mrs.
+Ferrers was tired of sight-seeing, but simply because she had
+conscientiously done every lion within a manageable distance of
+Montreux. In her secret soul Aunt Rhoda thought contemptuously
+of the bluest, biggest, lake in Switzerland, and all the glory
+of the Savoy range. Had not these easily-reached districts long
+ceased to be fashionable? Her soul yearned for Ragatz or
+Davos, St. Moritz or Pontresina, the only places of which people
+with any pretence to good style ever talked nowadays. It was
+all very well for Byron to be eloquent about Lake Leman or
+ecstatic about Mont Blanc; for in his time railways and monster
+steamboats had not vulgarised Savoy, and a gentleman
+might be rapturous about scenes which were only known to the
+travelled Englishman. But to-day, when every Cook’s tourist
+had scaled the Montanvert, when ‘Arry was a familiar figure on
+the skirts of the Great Glacier, who could feel any pride or real
+satisfaction in a prolonged residence on the Lake of Geneva.
+With all those subtle wiles of which a worldly woman is mistress
+did Mrs. Ferrers try to direct her brother’s thoughts and fancies
+towards the Engadine. She reminded him how the fashionable
+London physician had lauded the life-giving, youth-renewing
+quality of the atmosphere, and had particularly recommended
+Pontresina, if he could but manage the journey.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘But I can’t manage it, and I don’t mean to manage it,’ retorted
+Sir Vernon testily. ‘Do you suppose I am going to endure
+a jolting drive of twenty-four hours——’</p>
+
+<p>‘Fourteen at most,’ murmured his sister.</p>
+
+<p>‘A great deal you know about it! Do you think I am going
+to be carted up hill and down hill in order to get beforehand
+with winter on a bleak plateau, diversified with glaciers and pine-trees?
+It is absurd to suggest such a thing to a man in weak
+health.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is for your health that I make the suggestion, Vernon,’
+replied his sister meekly. ‘You cannot deny that Dr. Cavendish
+recommended the Engadine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Simply because the Engadine is the last fad of the moneyed
+classes. These doctors all sing the same song. One year they
+send everyone to Egypt, another year they try to popularise
+Algiers. One would suppose they were in league with the Continental
+railways and steam companies. One might get one’s
+nerves braced just as well at Broadway or Malvern, or on the
+Cornish moors; one might get well or die just as comfortably at
+Penzance or Torquay. You quite ignore the trouble of a change
+of quarters. I have made myself thoroughly comfortable here.
+If I were to go to the Engadine I should take only Lina and
+Jinman, and you would have to take Daphne home and keep
+her at the Rectory till our return.’</p>
+
+<p>This was not at all what Mrs. Ferrers had in view. She had
+taken for granted that if she could induce her brother to go to
+the Engadine she would be taken, as a matter of course, in his
+train. He was a free-handed man in all domestic matters,
+though he very often grumbled about his poverty; and he
+would have paid his sister’s expenses without a thought, if he
+were willing to endure her company. But it seemed that he
+was not willing, and that she had been unconsciously urging
+him to her own ruin. To have her Swiss experiences suddenly
+cut short, to have that audacious little flirt Daphne planted
+upon her for a month’s visit! The thing was too horrible to
+contemplate.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Vernon,’ she exclaimed, with affectionate eagerness,
+‘if you do not feel yourself equal to the journey it would
+be madness to undertake it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Exactly my own idea. Please say no more about it,’ he
+answered coldly. ‘I am sorry you are tired of Montreux.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Tired! I adore the place. It is positively delicious. A
+little stifling, perhaps, in the heat of the day, but beyond
+measure, lovely.’</p>
+
+<p>After this Mrs. Ferrers never more spoke word about St.
+Moritz or Pontresina. She saw by last week’s society papers
+that everybody worth talking about was taking his or her pleasure
+in that exalted region; but she only sighed and kept<span class="pagenum" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</span>
+silence. The ‘society papers’ ignored Lake Leman altogether,
+nor did they ever mention Mont Blanc. It seemed as if they
+hardly knew that such things existed. Their contributors all
+went straight through. Aunt Rhoda remembered how, many
+years before, when she had gone through the Trossachs and had
+been full of enthusiasm and delight, and had gone home proud
+of her tour, her travelled friends had so scorned her that she had
+never again ventured to mention Katrine or Lomond, Inversnaid
+or the Falls of Clyde.</p>
+
+<p>She settled down as well as she could to the domestic quiet
+of Montreux—the mornings and afternoons in the garden; the
+everlasting novels and poetry and crewel-work; Daphne and
+the St. Bernard sitting on the sloping grass by the edge of the
+water, or loitering about among the flowers. She bore this
+luxurious monotony as long as she could, and then she was
+seized with a happy thought which opened a little vista of
+variety.</p>
+
+<p>She discovered, one sultry afternoon, that Lina was looking
+pale and fagged, and called her brother’s attention to that fact.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t wish to alarm you, Vernon,’ she said, as they were
+all sitting at afternoon tea on the lawn, in the shade of a magnificent
+willow, whose long tresses trailed in the lake; ‘but I
+believe if you don’t give Lina a little change from this baking
+valley, she will be seriously ill.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Pray don’t say that, Aunt Rhoda; I assure you that I am
+perfectly well,’ remonstrated Madoline, looking up from her
+cups and saucers.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear, you are one of those unselfish creatures who go
+on pretending to be well until they sink,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers,
+with an air of knowing ever so much more about Lina than Lina
+knew herself. ‘You are languishing—positively pining for
+mountain air. Everybody is not created with the constitution
+of a salamander,’ she added, with a contemptuous glance at
+Daphne, who was sitting in the full glare of the afternoon sun,
+‘and for anybody except a salamander this place for the last
+three days has been almost intolerable. Dearly as I love you
+all, and delighted as I am to be with you, it has been only the
+idea of the dust and the heat of the railway that has prevented
+my going back to Warwickshire.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon looked uneasily at his beloved daughter. He had
+kept her a good deal about him; he had let her stay at home to
+bear him company, when the others were breathing the cool air
+of the lake, or climbing into the fresher atmosphere of the hills;
+and now it slowly dawned upon him that his selfishness might
+have endangered her health. Rhoda was always an alarmist—one
+of those unpleasant people who scent calamity afar off, and
+are prescient of coming trouble in the hour of present joy; but
+it was true that Madoline was pale and languid-looking. She<span class="pagenum" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</span>
+had a fatigued look, and her beauty had lost much of its bloom
+and freshness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Lina is not looking well,’ he said, glancing at her uneasily;
+‘what can we do for you, dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Nothing, father,’ answered Lina, with her gentle smile:
+‘there is nothing the matter.’</p>
+
+<p>‘You told me this morning that you could not sleep last
+night,’ murmured Mrs. Ferrers.</p>
+
+<p>‘It was a very warm night,’ admitted Lina, vexed at her
+aunt’s fussiness.</p>
+
+<p>‘Warm! It was stifling. This lake is at the bottom of a
+basin, completely shut in by hills,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, as if she
+had made a discovery. ‘I’ll tell you what we could do, Vernon.
+I might take the two girls up to the hotel at Glion, or at Les
+Avants. They are both very nice rustic hotels, clean and
+airy. A few days in that mountain air would pick Lina up
+wonderfully.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Would you like to go, dear?’ asked Sir Vernon doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like it of all things, if you would go with us,’
+answered his daughter; ‘but I don’t want to leave you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never mind me, Lina. I can get on pretty well for a few
+days, sorely as I shall miss you. I suppose three or four days
+will be enough?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Ample,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, delighted at having gained her
+point. ‘We can ramble about and see everything that is to be
+seen in three or four days.’</p>
+
+<p>‘So be it, then. Start as soon as you like. You had better
+send Jinman up at once to engage rooms for you. This is
+Monday. I suppose if you start to-morrow morning you can
+come back on Friday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Certainly. Three days in that magnificent air will be quite
+long enough to make Lina strong,’ replied Mrs. Ferrers, assured
+that in three days she would have exhausted the pleasures of a
+lively hotel and picturesque surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish you were coming with us, dear father,’ said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, do you think it would do me any good to have
+my old bones dragged up an almost perpendicular hill, and to
+put up with the indifferent accommodation of a rustic hotel? I
+am much better taking my ease here. The young men will
+want to go with you, no doubt.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you please, sir,’ answered Edgar.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring said never a word, but it was taken for
+granted that he meant to go. He and Madoline must, of course,
+be inseparable until that solemn knot should be tied which
+would make them one and indivisible for ever and ever.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘I WOLDE LIVE IN PEES, IF THAT I MIGHT.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">They</span> had been three days at the homely, comfortable hotel
+at Les Avants, and Madoline was looking all the better for the
+fresh hillside air, an improvement upon which Mrs. Ferrers
+expatiated as the latest confirmation of the one all-abiding fact
+of her own ineffable wisdom. It was one of the loveliest days
+there had been in all that delicious month of summer weather—passing
+warm, yet with a gentle west wind that faintly stirred
+the heavy chestnut leaves, and breathed on Daphne’s cheek, or
+fluttered round her neck like a caress, scarcely moving the soft
+lace ruffle round her throat. It was a day on which a white
+gown seemed the only thing possible in costume, and Daphne
+and Lina were both dressed in white. It was not by any means
+the kind of day for climbing or excursionising of any kind, as
+even that ardent explorer Aunt Rhoda was fain to confess;
+rather a day on which to wander gently up and down easy
+paths, or to sit in the pine-woods reading Tennyson or Browning,
+or adding a few lazy stitches to the last sunflower in
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>‘You seem to go at your work with a good deal less vigour,
+Daphne,’ said Edgar, seated at his lady’s feet, on a carpet of fir-needles,
+his knees drawn up to his chin, clad in light-gray alpaca,
+and a Panama hat on the back of his head—a cool but not especially
+becoming costume. Mr. Turchill was not one of those
+few men who look well in unconventional clothes.</p>
+
+<p>‘The weather is too warm for industry.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid those curtains will never be finished.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh yes, they will!’ said Daphne, ‘I mean to persevere. I
+may be a very old woman by the time they are done, but I am
+not going to give in. Lina says my life is a thing of shreds and
+patches. I will show her that I am not to be daunted by the
+stupendousness of a task. Three hundred and fifty-one and a
+quarter sunflowers still to be done. Doesn’t it rather remind
+you of that type of the everlasting—a rock against which a bird
+scrapes its beak once in a thousand years, and when the bird has
+worn away the whole rock, time will come to an end? Please
+go on with “Luria,” and try to be a little more dramatic and a
+little less monotonous.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am a wretched reader,’ said Edgar apologetically, as he
+looked for his place; ‘but I think I might read a shade better if
+I understood what I was reading. Browning is rather obscure.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid you have not a poetic mind. You didn’t seem to
+understand much of “Atalanta in Calydon,” which you so kindly
+read to us yesterday.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid I didn’t,’ confessed the Squire of Hawksyard,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</span>
+with praiseworthy meekness. ‘Modern poetry is rather difficult.
+I can always understand Shakespeare, and Pope, and Crabbe,
+and Byron, but I own that even Wordsworth is beyond me. His
+meaning is pretty clear, but I can’t discover his beauties.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Simply because your intellectual growth was allowed to
+stop when you left Rugby. But I insist upon you learning
+to appreciate Tennyson and Browning; so please go on with
+“Luria.”’</p>
+
+<p>‘In my opinion, Daphne,’ remarked Aunt Rhoda, with an
+oracular air, ‘it would have been much better for the balance
+of your mind if you had read a great deal more prose and a
+great deal less poetry. Good solid reading of a thoroughly useful
+kind would have taught you to think properly, and to express
+yourself carefully, instead of perpetually startling people
+by giving utterance to the wildest ideas.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I speak as the birds sing,’ answered Daphne, ‘because
+I can’t help it.’</p>
+
+<p>‘The habit of sober thought is a valuable one, which I hope
+you will acquire by-and-by, when you are mistress of a household;
+or else I am sorry for your future husband.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Please don’t be sorry for me, Mrs. Ferrers,’ protested
+Edgar, reddening angrily, as he always did at any slight to
+Daphne; ‘I am so perfectly contented with my fate that it
+would be a waste of power to pity me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is early days yet,’ sighed Aunt Rhoda. ‘But I live in
+the hope that Daphne will steady and tone down before she
+becomes a wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you don’t begin to read this instant,’ whispered Daphne,
+with her rosy lips close to Edgar’s ear, ‘I shall be made the text
+of one of Aunt Rhoda’s homilies.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar took the hint, and plunged anyhow and anywhere
+into the pages of Browning.</p>
+
+<p>They lived all day in the woods, taking their luncheon
+picnic fashion under the pine-trees. The two young men
+catered, and fetched and carried for them, assisted by Mowser.
+They brought cold fowls, and sliced Strasbourg ham, and salad,
+fruit and cake, a bottle of Bordeaux, and another of a Swiss
+white wine, which was rather like a weak imitation of Devonshire
+perry. But such a meal, spread upon a snow-white
+tablecloth under pine-trees, over whose dark feathery tops
+gleam the blue bright summer heaven, is about the most
+enjoyable banquet possible for youthful revellers. Even Aunt
+Rhoda admitted that it was an agreeable change from the home
+comforts of Arden Rectory.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope my dear Rector is being taken care of,’ she murmured
+plaintively, when she had dulled the edge of an appetite
+sharpened by that clear air.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you will all do justice to the chickens,’ said Gerald,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</span>
+looking across at Daphne, who sat by Edgar’s side in a thoroughly
+Darby and Joanish manner. ‘I remember once being
+at a picnic in a forest where an elderly fowl was made quite a
+feature of. My hostess fancied I was desperately hungry, and
+was quite distressed at my avoidance of the ancient bird.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne’s eyes were on her plate, but a slow smile crept
+over her face in spite of herself. She and Gerald had scarcely
+looked at each other in all those days among the pine-trees.
+They had lived in daily intercourse, and yet contrived to dwell
+as completely apart as if the lake had flowed between them;
+as if he, like St. Preux, had gazed across the blue waters to
+catch the glimmer of his beloved’s casement, and she, like
+Julie, had pined in the home that was desolate without love’s
+fatal presence. It was hardly possible for resolve to have been
+firmer than Daphne’s had been since that night at Fribourg. It
+was hardly possible for an honest purpose to have been more
+honestly fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Mowser, waiting upon the picnickers, saw that significant
+look of Gerald’s, and Daphne’s answering smile; just as she had
+seen many things at South Hill and elsewhere which only her
+observant eyes had noted.</p>
+
+<p>‘Still at your old tricks, my young lady,’ she said to herself;
+‘but Jane Mowser has got an eye upon you, and your mockinventions
+shan’t succeed, if Mowser’s faithful service can circum-prevent
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon they all sat idly looking down at the distant
+lake, lying so far beneath their feet, like a pool of blue water
+in the hollow of the hills, or wandered a little here and there,
+searching out higher points from which to look down at the
+lake, or across to the cloud-wrapped Alps. As the day wore on
+the light western breeze dropped and died away, and there came
+the stillness of a sultry August afternoon, just such an atmosphere
+as that of the lotus-eaters’ isle, the land where it was
+always afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Rhoda, who had lunched more copiously than the
+others, succumbed to the enervating influence of summer. The
+outline antimacassar on which she had been diligently stitching
+a design of infantine simplicity—a little girl with a watering-pot,
+a little boy with an umbrella—dropped from her hands.
+The blue lake below winked at her in the sunshine like a Titanic
+eye. The soft sweet breath of the pines gratified her nostrils,
+and that delicious sense of being gently baked through and
+through in Nature’s slow oven finally overcame her, and she
+sank into a thoroughly enjoyable slumber, a sleep in which
+she knew she was sleeping, and tasted all the blessedness of
+repose.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne sat on a knoll a little way below her aunt, struggling
+with a sunflower, heartily tired of it all the time, and painfully<span class="pagenum" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</span>
+oppressed by the consciousness of three hundred and fifty-one
+sunflowers remaining to be done after this one.</p>
+
+<p>‘It is like the line of the Egyptian kings,’ she murmured with
+a sigh. ‘An endless procession—too stupendous for the imagination
+to grasp.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar, stretched at the feet of his adored, had fallen as fast
+asleep as Aunt Rhoda. Madoline and Gerald had wandered off
+to the higher grounds. They were going to the Col du Jaman
+for anything Daphne knew to the contrary.</p>
+
+<p>This particular sunflower now approaching a finish seemed
+the most irritating of all his tribe. Daphne tightened her thread,
+pulled it into a knot, boggled at the knot, lost patience, and
+threw the work aside in a rage.</p>
+
+<p>‘Who could do crewel-work on such a stifling day?’ she
+cried, looking angrily down at the lake, with its girdle of towns
+and villages, gardens and vineyards; looking angrily even at
+picturesque Chillon, with its mediæval turrets and drawbridge,
+angrily at the calm, snow-shrouded Dent du Midi, and the dark
+green hills around its base.</p>
+
+<p>Then, having explored the wide landscape with eyes blind
+for this moment to its beauty, she looked discontentedly at the
+reclining form at her feet, the faithful lover, slumbering serenely,
+oblivious of wasps and centipedes.</p>
+
+<p>‘A log,’ she muttered to herself, ‘a log. Blind and deaf!
+Good; yes, I know he is good, and I try to value him for his
+goodness; but oh, how weary I am—how weary—how weary!’</p>
+
+<p>She flung aside her work, and wandered away along a
+narrow winding pathway, trodden by the feet of previous wanderers,
+upward and upward towards the granite point of the
+Dent du Jaman, gray against the sapphire sky. She walked,
+scarcely knowing where she went, or why: urged by a fever of
+the mind, which hurried her any whither to escape from the
+weariness of her own thoughts; as if such escape were possible
+to humanity.</p>
+
+<p>She had been walking along the same serpentine path for
+nearly an hour, neither knowing nor caring where it might be
+leading her. The gray peak of the granite rock always rose
+yonder in the same distant patch of blue above the dark pine-trees.
+It seemed as if she might go on mounting this hilly path
+for ever and get no nearer to that lonely point.</p>
+
+<p>‘It as far off as happiness or contentment,’ she said to herself;
+‘vain to dream of reaching it.’</p>
+
+<p>She stopped at last, and looked at her watch, feeling that
+the afternoon was wearing on, and that it might be time for
+her to hurry back to the family circle. It was past five, and
+the dinner hour was seven; and she had been roaming upwards
+by paths which might lead her astray in the descent, one
+woodland path being so like another. She began her homeward<span class="pagenum" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</span>
+journey, walking quickly, her thoughtful eyes bent upon the
+ground. She was hurrying on, absorbed in her own thoughts,
+when her name was uttered by that one only voice which had
+power to thrill her soul.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’</p>
+
+<p>She looked up and saw Gerald Goring, seated on a fallen
+pine-trunk, smoking.</p>
+
+<p>He flung away his cigarette and came towards her.</p>
+
+<p>‘Good afternoon,’ she said, with a careless nod; ‘I am
+hurrying back to dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>He put out his hand and caught her by the arm, and drew
+her towards him authoritatively.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are not going to escape me so easily,’ he said, pale to
+the lips with strongest feeling. ‘No; you and I have a long
+reckoning to settle. What do you think I am made of, that
+you dare to treat me as you have done for the last month?
+Am I a dog to be whistled to your side, to be lured away from
+love and fealty to another by every trick, and grace, and charm
+within the compass of woman’s art, and then to be dismissed
+like a dog—sent back to my former owner? You think you
+can cure me of my folly—cure me by silence and averted looks—that
+I can forget you and be again the man I was before I
+loved you. Daphne, you should know me better than that.
+You have kindled a fire in my blood which you alone can
+quench. You have steeped me in a poison for which you have
+the only antidote. Oh! my Œnone! my Œnone! will you
+refuse the balm that can heal my wounds, the balsam that you
+alone can bestow?’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne looked at him without flinching, the sweet girlish
+face deadly pale, but fixed as marble.</p>
+
+<p>‘I told you what I thought and meant in my letter,’ she said
+quietly. ‘I have never wavered from that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Never wavered!’ he cried savagely. ‘You are made of
+stone. I have been trying you. I have been waiting for you
+to give way. I knew it must come in the end, for I know that
+you love me—I know it—I know it. I have known it almost
+ever since I came back to South Hill, and saw your cheek
+whiten when you recognised me; and I have been waiting to
+see how long this drama of self-sacrifice would last—how long
+you would deny your love, and falsify your whole nature. It
+has lasted long enough, Daphne. The chase has been severe
+enough. Your tender feet have been wounded by the thorny
+ways of self-sacrifice. Your poor Apollo’s patience is well-nigh
+worn out. My love, my love, why should we go on dissembling
+to each other, and to all the rest of the world, looking at each
+other with stony countenances—dumb—cold, when every throb
+of each burning heart beats for the other, when every feeling in
+each breast responds to its twin soul, as finely as a note of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</span>
+music to the touch of the player? Let us end it all, Daphne.
+Let us make an end of this long dissimulation—this life of
+hypocrisy. Come with me, dear; fly with me. Now, Daphne—now,
+this instant, before there is time for either of us to repent.
+We can be married to-morrow morning at Geneva—it
+can be easily managed in that Puritan city. Come away with
+me, my beloved. I will honour and respect your purity as faithfully
+as if a hundred knights rode at your saddle-bow. My
+beloved, do you think that good can come to anyone by a life-long
+lie, by the trampling out of Nature’s sweetest purest feeling
+in two loving hearts?’</p>
+
+<p>He had drawn her to his breast. Folded in a lover’s arms
+for the first time in her life, she looked up into eyes whose passionate
+ardour seemed to encompass her with a divine flame: as
+if this man who clasped her to his breast had been indeed the
+old Greek god, sublime in the radiance of youth and genius and
+immortal beauty.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne, will you be my wife?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I cannot answer that question yet,’ she said slowly, falteringly,
+after a pause of some moments. ‘You must give me
+time. Let me go now—this instant. I must hurry back to the
+hotel.’</p>
+
+<p>‘What! when I hold you in my arms for the first time?—when
+I am steeped in the rapture of a satisfied love? Oh
+Daphne, if you knew how often in feverish dreams I have held
+you thus; I have looked down into your eyes, and drunk the
+nectar of your lips. What?’ as she drew herself suddenly away
+from him; ‘even now you refuse me one kiss—the solemn
+pledge of our union; cruel, too cruel girl!’</p>
+
+<p>‘To-morrow shall decide our fate,’ she said. ‘For pity’s
+sake, as you are a gentleman, let me go.’</p>
+
+<p>He released her that moment. His arms dropped at his
+sides, and she was free.</p>
+
+<p>‘There was no necessity for that appeal,’ he said coldly;
+‘you can go—alone if you choose—though I should like to walk
+back to the hotel with you. I left—your sister’ (it seemed as
+if it were difficult for him to pronounce Lina’s name) ‘in the
+garden before I strolled up here. I thought you were with your
+devoted lover. You say to-morrow shall decide our fate. I
+cannot imagine why you should hesitate, or postpone your decision.
+I know that you love me as fondly as I love you, and
+that neither of us can ever care for anyone else. Promise me at
+least one thing before we part to-day. Promise me that you
+will break off this pitiful mockery of an engagement to a man
+whom you despise.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I do not despise him—that is too hard a word—but I promise
+that I will never be Edgar Turchill’s wife.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Lose no time in letting him know that. My blood boils<span class="pagenum" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</span>
+and my heart sickens every time I see him touch your hand.
+Thank God, he keeps his kisses for your hours of privacy.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He has never kissed me but once in my life,’ said Daphne,
+tossing up her head, and blushing angrily.</p>
+
+<p>‘Thank God again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye,’ she said, looking at him with a pathetic tenderness,
+love struggling with despair.</p>
+
+<p>He leaned against the brown trunk of a fir-tree, pale to the
+lips, his eyes fixed on the ground, where the mosses and starry
+white blossoms, and tremulous harebells, and delicate maidenhair
+fern shone like jewels in the golden patches of light which
+flickered with every movement of the dark branches above them.
+His eyes perused every leaf and every petal, noting their form
+and colour with mechanical accuracy of observation. His pencil
+could have reproduced every detail of that little bit of broken
+ground six months afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne,’ he said huskily, ‘you are very cruel to me. I am
+not going to let you see how low a man can sink when he loves
+a woman as weakly, as blindly, as madly as I love you. I am
+not going to show you how base he can be—how sunk in his
+own esteem. There is some remnant of pride left in me. I am
+not going to crawl at your feet, or to shed womanish tears. But
+I tell you all the same, you are breaking my heart.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is all foolishness,’ said Daphne, pale, but calm of speech
+and eye, every nerve braced in the intensity of her resolution.
+‘It is folly and madness from beginning to end. You confessed
+as much just this moment. Why should I sacrifice my honour
+and my self-respect to gratify a weak, blind, mad love? I love
+my sister with a truer, better, holier affection than I could ever
+feel for you—if I had been your wife five-and-twenty years, and
+it were our silver wedding-day.’</p>
+
+<p>She smiled even in her despair at the impossible image of
+herself and Gerald Goring grown middle-aged and stout and
+commonplace, like the principal figures in a silver wedding.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why cannot you let the past be past—forget that you ever
+have been so foolish, so false, as to care for me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Forget! yes, if I could do that. It would be as easy to
+pluck my heart out of my body and go on living comfortably
+afterwards. No, Daphne, I can never forget. No, Daphne, I
+can never go back to the old calm tranquil love. It never was
+love. It was friendship, affection, respect—what you will, but
+not love. I never knew what love meant till I knew you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye,’ she said gently, perceiving that an argument of
+this kind might go on for ever.</p>
+
+<p>It was sweet to hear him plead; there was even a fearful
+kind of happiness—half sweet, half bitter—in being alone with
+him in that silent wood, in knowing that he was her own; heart,
+mind, and soul devoted to her; ready to sacrifice honour and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</span>
+good name for her sake: for what would the world say of him
+if he jilted Madoline and ran away with Madoline’s sister? Her
+breast swelled with ineffable pride at the thought of her triumph
+over this man to whom her girlish heart had given itself unwittingly,
+on just such a summer afternoon as this, two years ago.
+The man who had so often seemed to scorn her, to regard her
+only as a subject for friendly ridicule, in the beginning of things
+at South Hill. He was at her feet; she had made him her
+slave. Her heart thrilled with delight at the knowledge of his
+love; yet above every selfish consideration was her thought of
+her sister, and that made her firm as the granite peak of Jaman
+yonder, rising sharply above its black girdle of firs.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him for a few moments steadily, with a curious
+smile, a smile which lighted up the expressive face with an
+almost inspired look. Her hand rested lightly on the lace at her
+throat, the finger-tips just touching the pearl necklace, Lina’a
+new year’s gift, which she wore constantly. It was her talisman.</p>
+
+<p>‘Let us shake hands,’ she said, ‘and part friends.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Friends!’ he echoed scornfully, ‘am I ever anything else
+than your friend? I am your slave. The greater includes the
+less.’</p>
+
+<p>He clasped her hand in both of his, lifted it to his lips, and
+then let her go without a word.</p>
+
+<p>The smile faded from her face as she turned from him. She
+went slowly down the hill by the winding path. Gerald took a
+hasty survey of the scene, and then struck downwards by a
+descent that seemed almost perpendicular.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘FOR LOVE AND NOT FOR HATE THOU MUST BE DED.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Daphne and Gerald were gone, and the fair woodland
+scene was empty, a third figure came slowly out of the fir-grove,
+a substantial form clad in a rusty black-silk gown, short petticoats,
+side-laced cashmere boots, and a bonnet which was only
+thirty years behind the prevailing fashion. This antique form
+belonged to Jane Mowser, who carried a little basket of an
+almost infantine shape, and who had been gathering wild strawberries
+for her afternoon refreshment. While thus engaged
+she had espied Daphne’s white frock gleaming athwart the dark
+stems of the firs, and had contrived to skirt the pathway, and
+keep the young lady in view. Thus she had been within earshot
+when Daphne and Gerald Goring met, and had heard the
+greater part of their conversation. ‘I’ve known it and foreseen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</span>
+it. I knew it would come to this from the very beginning,’
+she muttered breathlessly; ‘and I’m thankful that I’m the
+chosen instrument for finding them out. Oh, my poor Miss
+Madoline, what a viper you have nourished in your loving
+bosom! Oh, the artfulness of that anteloping girl! pretending
+to reject him, and leading him on all the time, and meaning to
+run away with him to-morrow, and be married on the sly at
+Geneva, as truly as my name is Mowser. But I’ll put a stop
+to their goings on. I’ll let in the light upon their dark ways.
+Jane Mowser will prove a match for an antelope and a traitor.’</p>
+
+<p>The little basket trembled in Mrs. Mowser’s agitated grasp,
+as she trotted briskly downhill to the hotel. ‘I’ll make their
+baseness known to Sir Vernon,’ said Mowser, ‘and if he has the
+heart of a man he’ll crush that fair-haired young viper.’</p>
+
+<p>Having detested Daphne from the day of her birth, Mowser
+now felt a virtuous thrill, the sense of a relieved conscience, in
+the idea that Daphne had justified her dislike. It would have
+been pain and grief to her had the girl turned out well; but to
+have her judgment borne out, her wisdom made clear as daylight,
+every evil feeling of her heart fully excused by the girl’s
+bad conduct, this was comfort which weighed heavily in the
+scale against her honest sorrow for the mistress whom she
+honestly loved.</p>
+
+<p>She had no idea that the revelation she was going to make
+must necessarily lead to the cancelment of Madoline’s engagement.
+Her notion was that if Sir Vernon were made acquainted
+with the treachery that had been going on in his
+family circle, he would turn his younger daughter out of doors,
+and compel Gerald Goring to keep faith with his elder daughter.
+She allowed nothing for those finer shades of feeling
+which generally lead to the breaking of matrimonial engagements.
+It seemed to her that if a man had got himself
+engaged to a girl, and wanted to cry off, he must be taken by
+the scruff off his neck, as it were, and made to fulfill his promise.</p>
+
+<p>When seven o’clock came and the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table-d’hôte</i>, Daphne was
+shut up in her own room with a bad headache; Mr. Goring
+was missing; and there were only Aunt Rhoda, Madoline, and
+Edgar to take their accustomed places near one end of the
+long table. A little pencilled note from Daphne had been
+brought to Madoline by one of the chambermaids, just before
+dinner:</p>
+
+<p>‘I have been for a long, long walk, and the heat has given
+me a dreadful headache. Please excuse my coming to dinner.
+I will have some tea in my room.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That foolish girl has been walking too far for her strength,
+no doubt,’ said Mrs. Ferrers. ‘She is always in extremes. But
+what has become of Mr. Goring? Has he been overwalking
+himself too?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I think not,’ answered Lina, smiling; ‘we were dawdling
+about together near the hotel till four o’clock, and I don’t suppose
+he would start for a long ramble after that.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then why is he not at dinner?’</p>
+
+<p>This question was unanswerable. They could only speculate
+vaguely about the absent one. Nobody had seen him after
+he parted from Madoline at the garden gate. Perhaps he had
+walked to Vevey, perhaps to Montreux, miscalculating the distance,
+and the time it would take him to go and return. There
+was an uncomfortable feeling all through the slow protracted
+dinner, Madoline’s eyes wandering to the door every now and
+then, expecting to see Gerald enter; Edgar out of spirits because
+Daphne was absent; Mrs. Ferrers overcome by the heat,
+and beginning to perceive that Swiss scenery was a delight of
+which one might become weary.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am so vexed with myself for falling asleep and letting
+Daphne roam about alone,’ said Edgar, staring absently at a
+savoury mess of veal and vegetable to which he had mechanically
+helped himself.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t see why you should blame yourself for Daphne’s
+want of common sense,’ answered Aunt Rhoda somewhat
+snappishly. ‘It was an afternoon that would have sent anybody
+to sleep. Even I, who am generally so wakeful, closed
+my eyes for a few minutes over my book.’</p>
+
+<p>If Mrs. Ferrers had confessed that she had been snoring
+vigorously for an hour and a half, she would have been nearer
+the truth.</p>
+
+<p>Dinner came to its formal close in the shape of an unripe
+dessert, and there was still no sign of Gerald. Edgar went up
+to the corridor and knocked at Daphne’s door to inquire if her
+head were better.</p>
+
+<p>She answered from within in a weary voice:</p>
+
+<p>‘Thanks; no! It is aching awfully. Please don’t trouble
+yourself about me. Go for a nice walk with Lina.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t you think if you were to come out and sit in the
+garden the cool evening air would do you good?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I couldn’t lift my head from the pillow.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Then you will not be well enough to go back to Montreux
+to-morrow morning? We had better put off the journey.’</p>
+
+<p>‘On no account. I shall be quite well to-morrow. It is
+only a headache. Please go away and enjoy your evening.’</p>
+
+<p>‘As if I could enjoy life without you. Good-night, darling.
+God bless you!’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-night,’ replied the tired voice, and he went away
+sorrowing.</p>
+
+<p>What was his life worth without her? Absolutely nothing.
+He had chosen to make this one delight, this one love, the all-in-all
+of existence.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</span></p>
+
+<p>He went down into the garden with a moody dejected air
+and joined Lina, who was sitting in a spot where the view of
+the valley below and the height above was loveliest; but Lina
+was scarcely more cheerful than Edgar. She was beginning to
+feel seriously uneasy at Gerald’s absence.</p>
+
+<p>‘You don’t think anything can have happened—any accident?’
+she asked falteringly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you mean that he can have tumbled off a precipice?
+Hardly likely. A man who has climbed Mont Blanc and the
+Jungfrau would scarcely come to grief hereabouts. I think the
+worst that has befallen him is to have lost his dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>They sat in the garden till the valley and lake below were
+folded in darkness, and the moon was climbing high above the
+dark fir trees and the gray peak, and then Lina’s heart was
+lightened by the sound of a sympathetic tenor voice, whose
+every tone she knew, singing <em>La Donna e mobile</em>, in notes that
+floated nearer and nearer as the singer came up the grassy slope
+below the garden. She went to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dear Gerald, I have been miserable about you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Because I didn’t appear at dinner? Forgive me, dearest.
+The heat gave me a racking headache, and I thought a tremendous
+walk was the only way to cure it. I have been down to
+Montreux, and seen your father, who is pining for your return.
+He looked quite scared when I dashed into the garden where he
+was reading his paper on the terrace by the lake. I was not ten
+minutes at Montreux altogether.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Dear father! It was very good of you to go and see him.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was only a peep. I’m sorry you felt fidgety about me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am sorry you had a headache. It seems an epidemic.
+Daphne was not able to appear at dinner for the same reason.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Poor little Daphne!’</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>They were to start upon their return journey early next
+morning, so as to reach Montreux before the tropical heat of
+afternoon. They all breakfasted together in Madoline’s sitting-room
+between six and seven, Aunt Rhoda, who was a great
+advocate of early rising, looking much the sleepiest of the party.
+Daphne was pale and spiritless, but as she declared herself perfectly
+well nobody could say anything to her.</p>
+
+<p>They started at seven o’clock. There were two carriages; a
+roomy landau, and a vehicle of composite shape and long service
+for Mowser and the luggage. Daphne at once declared her intention
+of walking.</p>
+
+<p>‘The walk downhill through fields and orchards and vineyards’
+will be lovely,’ she said.</p>
+
+<p>‘Delicious,’ exclaimed Edgar; ‘but don’t you think it is
+rather too far for a walk?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Are you too lazy to walk with me?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think you need insult me by such a question.’ On
+which Daphne set out without another word, waving her hand
+lightly to Madoline as she vanished at a turn in the road.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald Goring handed the two ladies to their seats in the
+landau, and took his place facing them. He had a listless worn-out
+look, as if his pedestrianism last night had exhausted him.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are not looking well, Gerald,’ Lina said anxiously, disturbed
+at seeing his haggard countenance in the clear morning
+light.</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, who could possibly look well in such a languid
+atmosphere as this? We are in a vaporous basin, shut in by a
+circle of hills. Down at Montreux it is like being at the bottom
+of a gigantic forcing-pit; here, though we fancy ourselves ever
+so high, we are only on the side of the incline. The wall still
+rises above us. At this season we ought to be at Davos or
+Pontresina.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Those are the only places people go to nowadays,’ said Mrs.
+Ferrers discontentedly. ‘I shall be almost ashamed to tell my
+friends where I have been. All the people one meets in society
+go to the Engadine.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think that idea need spoil our enjoyment of this
+lovely scenery,’ said Madoline. ‘Look at Daphne and Mr.
+Turchill, what a way they are below us!’</p>
+
+<p>She pointed with her sunshade to a glancing white figure
+among the chestnut groves below. Edgar and Daphne had
+descended by those steep straight paths which made so little of
+the distance, while the horses were travelling quietly along the
+gentle windings of the road. It was a lovely drive to Montreux,
+the town and its adjacent villages looking like a child’s toys set
+out upon a green table; the castle of Chillon distinctly seen at
+every turn of the road; the hillsides shaded by Spanish chestnuts,
+big and old; verdant slopes mounting up and up towards
+a blue heaven. They passed the little post and telegraph office
+at Glion, a wooden hut, baked through and through with the
+sun, like an oven; the hotel where the children were at play in
+the garden, and a few early-rising adults strolled about rather
+listlessly, waiting for breakfast; and then down by the ever-winding
+road, past many a trickling waterfall; sometimes a
+mere cleft in the rock, sometimes a stony recess in a low wall,
+fringed with ferns, where the water drops perpetually into the
+basin below, and so by wooded slopes descending steeply to the
+sapphire lake, past the parish church, picturesquely situated on
+the hillside, and by many a public pump with a double spout,
+and tanks where the women were washing linen or vegetables
+under an open roof. Some kind of industry was going on at all
+these public fountains; or at least there was a group of children
+dabbling in the water.</p>
+
+<p>They were at Montreux before ten o’clock; Sir Vernon delighted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</span>
+to have his elder daughter back again, and even inquiring
+civilly about Daphne, who had not yet arrived, despite the tremendous
+spurt she and Edgar had begun with.</p>
+
+<p>‘That is just like Daphne,’ said her father, when he was told
+how she had insisted on walking all the way. ‘She is always
+beginning something tremendous and never finishing it. I daresay
+we shall have Turchill down here presently in search of a
+carriage to bring her the second half of the way.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yesterday she gave herself a headache by roaming about
+the hills,’ said Aunt Rhoda; ‘she has not a particle of discretion.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you expect her to be full of wisdom at eighteen, Auntie?’
+asked Madoline deprecatingly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can only say, my dear, that at eighteen I was not a fool,’
+replied Mrs. Ferrers sourly; and Lina did not argue the question
+further, knowing but too well how her aunt was affected towards
+Daphne.</p>
+
+<p>The pedestrians made their appearance five minutes later,
+none the worse for their long walk through fields and vineyards,
+and across cottage-gardens and orchards, a walk full of interest
+and diversity. Daphne, flushed with exercise, looked ever so
+much better than she had looked at breakfast, where she had
+been without appetite even for her beloved rolls and honey.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have a little business to arrange in Geneva,’ said Gerald,
+while they were all sitting about the airy drawing-room in a
+purposeless way, before settling down into their old quarters
+and old habits. ‘I think I shall take the train, as the quicker
+way, and then I can be back to dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>Madoline looked surprised.</p>
+
+<p>‘Have you anything very important to do in Geneva?’ she
+asked; ‘you never said anything about it before.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; it is a necessity which has arisen quite lately. I’ll tell
+you all about it—afterwards. Good-bye till dinner-time. You
+must be tired after your morning drive, and you won’t feel inclined
+for much excursionising to-day.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid we’ve seen everything there is to be seen within
+a manageable distance,’ said Mrs. Ferrers, rather dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne was sitting near the door. She had dropped into a
+low deep chair, and sat with her straw hat in her lap, full of
+wild flowers which she had gathered on her way down. Gerald
+stooped as he passed her, and took one of the half-withered
+blossoms—things so fragile in their delicate beauty that they
+faded as soon as plucked—and put it in his breast. The act was
+so carelessly done that no one seeing it would have perceived
+any significance in it, or could have guessed that the hand which
+took the flower trembled with suppressed feeling, and that the
+heart against which it lay beat loud with passion.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am going to make all arrangements for our marriage,’ he
+said in a low voice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye,’ she answered, looking straight up at him.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone. Her gaze followed him slowly to the door,
+and lingered there; then she rose and gathered up her flowers.</p>
+
+<p>‘I think I’ll go to my room and lie down,’ she said to Madoline.
+‘Please don’t let Edgar come worrying about me. Tell
+him to amuse himself without my company for once in a
+way.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My dearest, I don’t think he has any idea of amusing himself
+without you in Switzerland. How tired you look, my poor
+pet! Go and lie down and get a nice refreshing sleep after your
+walk. You shall not be disturbed till I come myself to bring
+you some tea. That will be better for you than coming down
+to luncheon.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t feel much inclined for sleep, though I confess to
+being tired. I should like you to come and sit with me for a
+little, Lina, soon after luncheon, if you don’t mind.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Mind! My darling, as if I were not always glad to be with
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne went slowly up to her room, very slowly, with automatic
+steps, as one who walks in his sleep. The dark gray eyes
+looked straight into space, fixed and heavy with despair.</p>
+
+<p>‘He is mad, and I am mad,’ she said to herself. ‘How can
+it end—except——’</p>
+
+<p>Her room was bright and pretty, gaily furnished in that
+bright foreign style which studies scenic effect rather than solid
+comfort; French windows opening upon a balcony, shaded with
+a striped awning. The windows looked on to the lake, across
+the bright blue water to the opposite shore, with its grand and
+solitary hills, its villages few and far apart. Daphne stood for a
+long while looking dreamily at the expanse of bright water, and
+the bold and rugged shore beyond; at Chillon in its rocky
+corner; at the deep dark gorge whence the yellow Rhone comes
+rushing in, staining Lake Loman’s azure floor. How lovely it
+all was—how lovely, and yet of how little account in the sum of
+man’s destiny! All Nature’s loveliness was powerless to mend
+one broken heart.</p>
+
+<p>‘What was it that he read on my hand that day at Fontainebleau?’
+she asked herself. ‘Was it this? was it this?’</p>
+
+<p>A steamer went by laden with people, a band playing a waltz
+tune. The world seemed full of thoughtless souls, for whom life
+meant only idle empty pleasures. Daphne turned away from
+that sunlit scene sick at heart, wishing that she were lying
+quietly in one of those green dells through which they had
+passed to-day, a leafy hollow hidden in the hillside, and that life
+were ebbing away without an effort.</p>
+
+<p>‘Seneca was a wise and learned man,’ she thought; ‘but
+with all his wisdom he found it difficult to die. Cleopatra’s
+death sounds easier—a basket of fruit and a little gliding snake<span class="pagenum" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</span>
+a bright pretty creature that a child might have played with,
+and been stung to death unawares.’</p>
+
+<p>She threw herself on the bed, not tired from her walk, which
+seemed as nothing to the lithe active limbs, but weary of life
+and its perplexities. Oh, how he loved her, and how she loved
+him! And what a glorious godlike thing life would be in his
+company! Glorious, but it must not be; godlike, but honour
+barred the way.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh God! let me never forget what she has been to me,’ she
+prayed, with clasped hands, with all her soul in that prayer—‘sister,
+mother, all the world of love, and protection, and comfort—teach
+me to be true to her; teach me to be loyal.’</p>
+
+<p>For two long hours she lay, broad awake, in a blank tearless
+despair; and then the door was gently opened, and Madoline
+came softly into the room and seated herself by the bed.
+Daphne was lying with her face to the wall. She did not turn
+immediately, but stretched out her hand to her sister without a
+word.</p>
+
+<p>‘Dearest, your hand is burning hot; you must be in a fever,’
+said Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘No; there is nothing the matter with me.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I’m afraid there is. I’m afraid that walk was too fatiguing.
+I have ordered some tea for you.’ The maid brought it in as
+she spoke; not Mowser; Mowser had kept herself aloof with an
+air of settled gloom, ever since her return to Montreux. ‘I hope
+you have had a nice long sleep.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I have not been able to sleep much,’ answered Daphne, turning
+her languid head upon her pillow, and then sitting up on
+the bed, a listless figure in a tumbled white gown, with loose
+hair falling over shoulders; ‘I have not been able to sleep much,
+but I have been resting. Don’t trouble about me, Lina dear. I
+am very well. What delicious tea!’ she said, as she tasted the
+cup which Madoline had just poured out for her. ‘How good
+you are! I want to talk with you—to have a long serious talk—about
+you and—Mr. Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Indeed, dear. It is not often my lively sister has any inclination
+for seriousness.’</p>
+
+<p>‘No; but I have been thinking deeply of late about long
+engagements, and short engagements, and love before marriage,
+and love after marriage—don’t you know.’ Her eyes were hidden
+under their drooping lids, but her colour changed from pale
+to rose and from rose to pale as she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>‘And what wise thoughts have you had upon the subject,
+dearest?’ asked Lina lightly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can hardly explain them; but I have been thinking—you
+know that I am not desperately in love with—poor Edgar.
+I have never pretended to be so; have I, dear?’</p>
+
+<p>‘You have always spoken lightly of him. But it is your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</span>
+way to speak lightly of everything; and I hope and believe that
+he is much more dear to you than you say he is.’</p>
+
+<p>‘He is not. I respect him, because I know how good he
+is; but that is all. And do you know, Lina, I have sometimes
+fancied that your feeling for Mr. Goring is not much stronger
+than mine for Edgar. You are attached to him; you have an
+affection for him, which has grown out of long acquaintance
+and habit—an almost sisterly affection; but you are not passionately
+in love with him. If he were to die you would be
+grieved, but you would not be heartbroken.’ She said this slowly,
+deliberately, her eyes no longer downcast, but reading her sister’s
+face.</p>
+
+<p>‘Daphne!’ cried Madoline, ‘how dare you? How can you
+be so cruel? Not love him! Why, you know that I have loved
+him ever since I was a child, with a love which every day of my
+life has made stronger—a love which is so rooted in my heart
+that I cannot imagine what life would be like without him. I
+am not impulsive or demonstrative—I do not talk about those
+things which are most dear and most sacred in my life, simply
+because they are too sacred to be spoken about. If he were—to
+die—if I were to lose him—no, I cannot think of that. It is
+heartless of you to put such thoughts into my mind. My life
+has been all sunshine—a calm happy life. God may be keeping
+some great grief in store for my later days. If it were to come
+I should bow beneath the rod; but my heart would break all
+the same.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And if the grief took another shape—if he were to be false
+to you?’ said Daphne, laying her hand, icy cold now, upon her
+sister’s.</p>
+
+<p>‘That would be worse,’ answered Lina huskily; ‘it would
+kill me.’</p>
+
+<p>Daphne said not a word more. Her hands were clasped, as
+in prayer; the dark sorrowful eyes were lifted, and the lips
+moved dumbly.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ought not to have talked of such things, dear,’ she said,
+gently, after that voiceless prayer. ‘It was very foolish.’</p>
+
+<p>Lina was profoundly agitated. That calm and gentle nature
+was capable of strongest feeling. The image of a terrible sorrow—a
+sorrow which, however unlikely, was not impossible—once
+evoked was not to be banished in a moment.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes; it was foolish, Daphne,’ she answered tremulously.
+‘No good can ever come of such thoughts. We are in God’s
+hands. We can only be happy in this life with fear and trembling,
+for our joy is so easily turned into sorrow. And now,
+dear, if you are quite comfortable, and there is nothing more I
+can do for you, I must go back to Aunt Rhoda. I promised to
+go for a walk with her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t it too warm for walking?’</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Not for Aunt Rhoda’s idea of an afternoon walk, which is
+generally to stroll down to the pier, and sit under the trees
+watching the people land from the steamers.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Shall you be out long, do you think?’</p>
+
+<p>‘That will depend upon Aunt Rhoda. She said something
+about wanting to go in the steamer to Vevey, if it could be done
+comfortably before dinner.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye! Kiss me, Lina. Tell me you are not angry
+with me for what I said just now. I wanted to sound the depths
+of your love.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It was cruel, dear; but I am not angry,’ answered Lina,
+kissing her tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>Daphne put her arms round her sister’s neck, just as she had
+done years ago when she was a child.</p>
+
+<p>‘God bless you, and reward you for all you have been to me,
+Lina!’ she faltered tearfully; and so, with a fervent embrace,
+they parted.</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII">CHAPTER XXXIII.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘IS THERE NO GRACE? IS THERE NO REMEDIE?’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> the door closed on Madoline, Daphne rose and
+changed her crumpled muslin for a dressing-gown, and brushed
+the bright silky hair and rolled it up in a loose knot at the back
+of her head, and bathed her feverish face, and put on a fresh
+gown, and made herself altogether a respectable young person.
+Then she seated herself before a dressing-table, which was littered
+all over with trinket-boxes and miscellaneous trifles more
+or less indispensable to a young lady’s happiness.</p>
+
+<p>She had acquired a larger collection of jewellery than is
+usually possessed by a girl of eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>There were all Madoline’s birthday and New Year gifts:
+rings, lockets, bracelets, brooches, all in the simplest style, as
+became her youth, but all valuable after their kind. And there
+were Edgar’s presents: a broad gold bracelet, set with pearls,
+to match her necklace; a locket with her own and her lover’s
+initials interwoven in a diamond monogram; a diamond and
+turquoise cross; and the engagement ring—a half-hoop of
+magnificent opals.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wonder why he chose opals,’ mused Daphne, as she put
+the ring into the purple-velvet case in which it had come from
+the jeweller’s. ‘Most people think them unlucky; but it seems
+as if my life was to be overshadowed with omens.’</p>
+
+<p>She put all her lover’s presents together, and packed them
+neatly in a sheet of drawing-paper, the largest and strongest
+kind of wrapper she could find. Then, when she had lighted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</span>
+her taper and carefully sealed this packet, she wrote upon it:
+‘For Edgar, with Daphne’s love’—a curious way in which to
+return a jilted lover’s gifts.</p>
+
+<p>Then she sat for some time with the rest of her treasures
+opened out before her on the table where she wrote her letters,
+and finally she wrapped up each trinket separately, and wrote
+on each packet. On one: ‘For Madame Tolmache;’ on another:
+‘For Miss Toby;’ on a third: ‘For Martha Dibb.’ On
+a box containing her neatest brooch she wrote: ‘For dear old
+Spicer.’ There were others inscribed with other names. She
+forgot no one; and then at the last she sat looking dreamily at
+a little ring, the first she had ever worn—best loved of all her
+jewels, a single heart-shaped turquoise set in a slender circlet of
+plain gold. Madoline had sent it to her on her thirteenth birthday.
+The gold was worn and bent with long use, but the stone
+had kept its colour.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should like him to have something that was mine,’ she
+said to herself; and then she put the ring into a tiny cardboard
+box, and sealed it in an envelope, on which she wrote: ‘For
+Mr. Goring.’</p>
+
+<p>This was the last of her treasures, except the pearl necklace
+which she always wore—her amulet, as she called it—and now
+she put all the neat little packages carefully away in her desk,
+and on the top of them she laid a slip of paper on which she
+had written:</p>
+
+<p>‘If I should die suddenly, please let these parcels be given
+as I have directed.’</p>
+
+<p>This task being accomplished at her leisure, and the desk
+locked, she went once more to the open window, and looked out
+at the lake. The atmosphere and expression of the scene had
+changed since she looked at it last. The vivid dancing brightness
+of morning was gone, and the mellow light of afternoon
+touched all things with its pensive radiance. The joyousness
+of the picture had fled. Its beauty was now more in harmony
+with Daphne’s soul. While she was standing there in an idle
+reverie, a peremptory tap came at the door.</p>
+
+<p>‘Come in,’ she answered mechanically, without turning her
+head.</p>
+
+<p>It was Mowser, whose severe countenance appeared round
+the half-open door.</p>
+
+<p>‘If you please, Miss Daphne, Sir Vernon wishes to speak to
+you, immediate, in his study.’</p>
+
+<p>Seldom in Daphne’s life had such a message reached her.
+Sir Vernon had not been in the habit of seeking private conferences
+with his younger daughter. He had given her an occasional
+lecture <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">en passant</i>, but however he might have disapproved
+of the flightiness of her conduct, he had never summoned her to
+his presence for a scolding in cold blood.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Is there anything wrong?’ she asked hurriedly; but Mowser
+had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>She went slowly down the broad shallow staircase, and to
+the room which her father had made his private apartment.
+It was one of the best rooms in the house, facing the lake, and
+sheltered from the glare of the sun by a couple of magnificent
+magnolia trees, which shaded the lawn in front of the windows.
+It was a large room with a polished floor, and pretty Swiss furniture,
+carved cabinets, and a carved chimney-piece, and a little
+blue china clock set in a garland of carved flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon was seated at his writing-table, grim, stern-looking,
+his open despatch-box before him in the usual official style.
+A little way off sat Edgar Turchill, his folded arms resting on
+the back of a high chair, his face hidden. It was the attitude
+of profound despondency, or even of despair. One glance at
+her father’s face, and then at that lowered head and clenched
+hands, told Daphne what was coming.</p>
+
+<p>‘You sent for me,’ she faltered, standing in the middle of
+the bare polished floor, and looking straight at her father, fearlessly,
+for there is a desperate sorrow which knows not fear.</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, madam,’ replied Sir Vernon in his severest voice. ‘I
+sent for you to tell you, in the presence of the man who was to
+have been your husband, that your abominable treachery has
+been discovered.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I am not treacherous,’ she answered, ‘only miserable, the
+most miserable girl that ever lived.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar lifted up his face, and looked at her, with such a depth
+of tender reproachfulness, with such ineffable pity as made his
+homely countenance altogether beautiful.</p>
+
+<p>‘I hoped I should have made you happy,’ he said. ‘God
+knows I have tried hard enough.’</p>
+
+<p>She neither answered nor looked at him. Her eyes were
+fixed upon her father—solemn tearless eyes, a marble passionless
+face—she stood motionless, as if awaiting judgment.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are the falsest and the vilest girl that ever lived,’
+retorted Sir Vernon. ‘Perhaps I ought hardly to be surprised
+at that. Your mother was——’</p>
+
+<p>‘For God’s sake, spare her!’ cried Edgar huskily, stretching
+out his arm as if to ward off a blow, and the word on Sir Vernon’s
+lips remained unspoken. ‘That is no fault of hers. Let
+her bear her own burden.’</p>
+
+<p>‘She ought to find it heavy enough, if she has a heart or a
+conscience,’ cried Sir Vernon passionately. ‘But I don’t believe
+she has either. If she had a shred of self-respect, or common
+gratitude, or honour, or womanly feeling, she would not have
+stolen her sister’s lover.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I did not steal him,’ answered Daphne resolutely. ‘His
+heart came to me of its own accord. We both fought hard<span class="pagenum" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</span>
+against Fate. And even now there is no harm done; it has
+been only a foolish fancy of Mr. Goring’s; he will forget all
+about it when I am—far away. I will never look in his face
+again. I will go to the uttermost end of the earth, to my grave,
+rather than stand between him and Madoline. Oh father,
+father, you who have always been so hard with me, do you
+remember that day at South Hill, directly after Mr. Goring
+came home, when I begged you, on my knees, to send me back
+to school, to France, or Germany, anywhere, so that I should be
+far away from my happy home—and from him?’</p>
+
+<p>Her tears came at this bitter memory. Yes, she had fought
+the good fight: but so vainly, to such little purpose!</p>
+
+<p>‘I knew that I was weak,’ she sobbed,’and I wanted to be
+saved from myself. But I am not so wicked as you think. I
+never tried to steal Mr. Goring’s heart. I have never imagined
+the possibility of my being in any way the gainer by his inconstancy.
+I have told myself always that his love for me was a
+passing folly, of which he would be cured, as a man is cured of
+a fever. I do not know what you have been told about him
+and me, or who is your informant; but if you have been told
+the truth you must know that I have been true to my sister—even
+in my misery.’</p>
+
+<p>‘My informant saw you in Mr. Goring’s arms; my informant
+heard his avowal of love, and your promise to run away with
+him, and be married at Geneva.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is false. I made no such promise. I never meant to
+marry him. I would die a hundred deaths rather than injure
+Madoline. I am glad you know the truth. And you, Edgar, I
+have tried to love you, my poor dear; I have prayed that I might
+become attached to you, and be a good wife to you in the days
+to come. I have been honest, I have been loyal. Ask Mr.
+Goring, by-and-by, if it is not so. He knows, and only he can
+know, the truth. Father, Madoline need never be told that her
+lover has wavered. She must not know. Do you understand?
+She must not! It would break her heart, it would kill her. He
+will forget me when I am far away—gone out of his sight for
+ever. He will forgot me; and the old, holier, truer love will
+return in all its strength and purity. All this pain and folly
+will seem no more to him than a feverish dream. Pray do not
+let her know.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Do you think I would do her so great a wrong as to let her
+marry a traitor? a false-hearted scoundrel, who can smile in her
+face, and make love to her sister behind her back. She is a
+little too good to have your leavings foisted upon her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘If you tell her, you will break her heart.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That will lie at your door. I would rather see her in her
+coffin than married to a villain.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar rose slowly from his seat and moved towards the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</span>
+door. He had nothing to do with this discussion. His mind
+could hardly enter into the question of Gerald Goring’s treachery.
+It was Daphne who had betrayed him; Daphne who had deceived
+him, and mocked him with sweet words; Daphne whose liking
+had seemed more precious to him than any other woman’s love,
+because he believed that no other man had ever touched the
+virginal unawakened heart. And now he was told that she
+could love passionately, that she could give kiss for kiss, and
+rain tears upon a lover’s breast, that from first to last he had
+been her victim and her dupe!</p>
+
+<p>‘Good-bye, Daphne!’ he said, very quietly. ‘I am going
+home as fast as train and boat can take me. I would have been
+contented to accept something less than your love, believing that
+I should win your heart in time, but not to take a wife whose
+heart belonged to another man. You told me there was no one
+else; you told me your heart was free.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I told you there was no one else who had ever cared for
+me,’ faltered Daphne, remembering her equivocating answer
+that evening at South Hill.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t want to reproach you, Daphne. I am very sorry for
+you.’</p>
+
+<p>‘And I am very sorry that an honest man whom I respect
+should have been fooled by a worthless girl,’ said Sir Vernon.
+‘Give him back his engagement ring. Understand that all is over
+between you and him,’ he added, turning to his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>‘I wish it to be so. I have put all your presents together in
+a parcel, Edgar,’ answered Daphne. ‘You will receive them in
+due course.’</p>
+
+<p>‘It is best to be off with the old love before we are on with
+the new,’ quoted Sir Vernon scornfully; ‘and she says she did
+not mean to run away with Goring, in spite of this deliberate
+preparation.’</p>
+
+<p>Edgar was gone. Daphne and her father were alone, the
+girl still standing on the very spot where she had stood when
+she first came into the room.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have told you nothing but the truth,’ she said. ‘Why are
+you so hard with me?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Hard with you!’ he echoed, getting up from before his desk
+and looking at her with vindictive eyes as he moved slowly
+towards the door. ‘How can I be hard enough to you? You
+have broken my daughter’s heart.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Father!’ she cried, falling on her knees and clinging to him
+in her despair. ‘Father, is she to have all your love? Have
+you no tenderness, no pity left for me? Am I not your daughter
+too?’</p>
+
+<p>‘Your mother was my wife,’ he answered curtly, pushing her
+out of his way as he passed from the room.</p>
+
+<p>He was gone. She knelt where he had left her, a desolate<span class="pagenum" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</span>
+figure in the spacious bright-looking room, the afternoon sun
+making golden bars upon the brown floor, her yellow hair touched
+here and there with glintings of yellow light.</p>
+
+<p>She remained in the same attitude for some minutes, her
+heavy eyelids drooping over tearless eyes, her arms hanging listlessly,
+her hands loosely clasped. Her mind for a little while
+was a blank: and then there came into it unawares a verse, taken
+at random, from a familiar hymn:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">‘The trials that beset you,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">The sorrows ye endure,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent1">The manifold temptations,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent4">That death alone can cure.’</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>‘That death alone can cure,’ she repeated slowly, pushing
+back the loose hair from her eyes; and then she rose from her
+knees and went out through an open window into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>It was about five o’clock. There was a look of exquisite
+repose over all the scene, from the snow-bound summit of the
+Dent du Midi yonder, down to the gardens that edged the lake,
+like a garland of summer flowers encircling that peerless
+blue. It was abright glad-looking world, and passing peaceful.
+Far away beyond that grand range of hills lay the ice-fields
+of Savoy, the everlasting glaciers, gliding with impalpable motion
+in obedience to some mysterious law which is still one of
+Nature’s secrets, the wilderness of snow-clad peaks and wild
+moraines, the gulfs and caverns, the unfathomable abysses of
+silence and of death. Daphne thought of those unseen regions
+with a thrill of awe as she walked slowly down the slope of the
+lawn.</p>
+
+<p>‘I have seen so little of Switzerland after all,’ she said to herself,
+‘so little of this wide wonderful world.’</p>
+
+<p>She went to the toy <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">châlet</i>, the dainty opera-stage boat-house
+where her boat was kept. There was no friendly Bink here to
+launch the skiff for her, but the lower part of the boat-house
+jutted out over the gable, and the boat was always bobbing
+about in the limpid water. She had only to go down the
+wooden steps, unmoor her boat, and row away over that wide
+stretch of placid water which she had never seen disturbed by a
+tempest.</p>
+
+<p>As she was stepping into the boat, the dog Monk came
+bounding and leaping across the grass, and bounced into her
+arms, putting his huge fore-feet on her shoulders, and swooping
+an affectionate tongue over her pallid face. He had not seen
+her since her return from the hills, and was wild with rapture
+at the idea of reunion.</p>
+
+<p>‘No, Monk, not to-day,’ she said gently, as he tried to get
+into the boat with her; ‘not to-day, dear faithful old Monk.’</p>
+
+<p>The huge creature could have upset the boat with one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</span>
+bound; and the little hand stretched out to push him back
+must have been as a fluttering rose-leaf against his sinewy
+breast; but there was a moral force in the blanched face and
+the steady eye which dominated his brute power. He recoiled,
+and lifted up his head with a plaintive howl as the boat shot
+off, the twin sails, the white and scarlet awning, flashing in the
+sun.</p>
+
+<p>A little way from the shore Daphne paused, resting on her
+oars, and looking back at the bright garden, with its roses and
+magnolias, and many-coloured flower-beds, the white villa gay
+with its crimson-striped blinds; and then with one wide gaze
+she looked round the lovely landscape, the long range of hills,
+in all their infinite variety of light and shadow, verdant slopes
+streaked with threads of glittering water, vineyards and low
+gray walls, rising terrace above terrace, quaint Vevey, and gray
+old Chillon, the black gorge that lets in the turbid Rhone;
+churches with square towers and ivy-covered walls; and yonder
+the inexorable mountains of Savoy. For a little while her eye
+took in every detail of the scene: and then it all melted from
+her troubled gaze, and she saw not that grand Alpine chain,
+showing cloudlike amid the clouds, but the brown Avon and its
+dipping willows, the low Warwickshire hills and village gables,
+the distant spire of Stratford above the many-arched bridge,
+the water-meadows at South Hill, and the long fringe of yellow
+daffodils waving in the March wind.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh for the reedy banks and shallow reaches of the Avon!’
+she thought, her heart yearning for home.</p>
+
+<p>Then with bowed head she bent over her oars, and the light
+boat shot away across the wake of a passing steamer; it shot
+away, far away to the middle of the lake; it vanished like a
+feather blown by a summer breeze; and it never came back
+again.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>The empty boat drifted ashore at Evian in the gray light of
+morning, while Gerald Goring, with a couple of Swiss boatmen,
+was rowing about the lake, stopping to make inquiries at every
+landing-place, sending scouts in every direction, in quest of that
+missing craft. No one ever knew, no one dared to guess, how it
+had happened: but every one knew that in some dark spot below
+that deep blue water Daphne was at rest. The dog had been
+down by the boat-house all night, howling fitfully through the
+dark silent hours. He had not left the spot since Daphne’s
+boat glided away from the steps.</p>
+
+<p>It had been a night of anguish and terror for all that household
+at Montreux—a night of agitation, of alternations of hope
+and fear. Even Sir Vernon was profoundly moved by anxiety
+about the daughter to whom he had given so little of his love.
+He knew that he had been hard and merciless in that last interview.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</span>
+He had thought only of Madoline; and the knowledge
+that Madoline had been wronged—that the elder sister’s love
+had been tempted to falsehood by the arts and coquetries of the
+younger sister—had stung him to a frenzy of anger. Nothing
+could be too bad for the ingrate who had sinned against the best
+of sisters. He was too hard a man to give the sinner the benefit
+of the doubt, and to believe that she had sinned unconsciously.
+In his mind Daphne had wickedly and deliberately corrupted
+the heart of her sister’s affianced husband. Angry as he had felt
+with Gerald, his indignation against the weaker vessel was fiercer
+than his wrath against the stronger.</p>
+
+<p>Mowser had told her story with truth as to the main facts;
+but with such embellishments and heightened colouring as made
+Daphne appear the boldest and most depraved of her sex. In
+Mowser’s version of that scene in the pine-wood there was no
+hint of temptation resisted, of a noble soul struggling with an
+unworthy passion, of a tender heart trying to be faithful to
+sisterly affection, while every impulse of a passionate love tugged
+the other way. All Mowser could tell was that Miss Daphne
+had sobbed in Mr. Goring’s arms, that he had kissed her, as she,
+Mowser, had never been kissed, although she had kept company
+and been on the brink of marriage with a builder’s foreman;
+and that they had talked of being married at Geneva—leastways
+Mr. Goring had asked Miss Daphne to run away with him for
+that purpose, and she had not said no, but had only begged him
+to give her twenty-four hours—naturally requiring that time to
+pack her clothes and make all needful preparation for flight.</p>
+
+<p>Passionately attached to his elder daughter, and always
+ready to think evil of Daphne, Sir Vernon needed no confirmation
+of Mowser’s story. It was only the realisation of what he
+always feared—the mother’s falsehood showing itself in the
+daughter—hereditary baseness. It was the girl’s nature to betray.
+She had all her mother’s outward graces and too fascinating
+prettiness. How could he have hoped that she would have
+any higher notions of truth and honour?</p>
+
+<p>Moved to deepest wrath at the wrong done to Madoline, Sir
+Vernon’s first impulse had been to send for Gerald Goring, in
+order to come to an immediate understanding with that offender.
+He was told that Mr. Goring had gone to Geneva, and was not
+expected home before eight o’clock. He then sent for Edgar,
+and to that unhappy lover bluntly and almost brutally related
+the story of Daphne’s baseness. Edgar was inclined to disbelieve,
+nay, even to laugh Mowser’s slander to scorn; but Mowser, summoned
+to a second interview, stuck resolutely to her text, and
+was not to be shaken.</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t believe it,’ faltered Edgar, stricken to the heart,
+‘unless I hear it from her own lips.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Go and fetch her,’ said Sir Vernon to Mowser, and then<span class="pagenum" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</span>
+had followed Daphne’s appearance, and those admissions of
+hers which told Edgar only too clearly how he had been deceived.</p>
+
+<p>The two men, Gerald and Edgar, passed each other on the
+railway between Lausanne and Geneva—Edgar on his way to
+the city, Gerald going back to Montreux. Mr. Goring wondered
+at seeing his friend’s pale face glide slowly by as the two
+trains crossed at the junction.</p>
+
+<p>‘It looks as if she had given him his quietus already,’ he said
+to himself. ‘My brave little Daphne!’</p>
+
+<p>He was going back to Montreux with his heart full of hope
+and gladness. He had taken all the needful measures at Geneva
+to make his marriage with Daphne an easy matter, would she
+but consent to marry him. And he had no doubt of her consent.
+Could a girl love as she loved, and obstinately withhold
+herself from her lover?</p>
+
+<p>He forgot the pain he must inflict on one who had been so
+dear; forgot the woman who had been the guiding star of his
+boyhood and youth; forget everything except that one consummate
+bliss which he longed for—the triumph of a passionate
+love. That crown of life once snatched from reluctant
+Fate, all other things would come right in time. Madoline’s
+gentle nature would forgive a wrong which was the work of
+destiny rather than of man’s falsehood. Sir Vernon would be
+angry and unpleasant, no doubt; but Gerald Goring cared
+very little about Sir Vernon. The world would wonder; but
+Gerald cared nothing for the world. He only desired Daphne,
+and Daphne’s love; having all other good things which life,
+looked at from the worldling’s standpoint, could give.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was setting as he approached Montreux, and all
+the lake was clothed in golden light. Rose-hued mountains,
+golden water, smiled at him as if in welcome.</p>
+
+<p>‘What a lovely world it is!’ he said to himself; ‘and how
+happy Daphne and I will be in it—in spite of Fate and metaphysical
+aid. There I go, quoting the Inevitable, as usual!’</p>
+
+<p>He walked quickly from the station to the villa, eager to see
+Daphne, to hear her voice, to touch the warm soft hand, and be
+assured that there was such a being, and that he had not been
+the dupe of some vision of intangible loveliness, as Shelley’s
+Alastor was in the cavern. That last look of Daphne’s haunted
+him—so direct, so solemn a gaze, so unlike the shy glance of conscious
+love. Nay, it resembled rather the look of some departed
+spirit, returning from Pluto’s drear abode to take its last fond
+farewell of the living.</p>
+
+<p>The vestibule stood open to the road, an outer hall filled
+with plants and flowers, an airy Italian-looking entrance.
+Gerald walked straight in, and to the drawing-room. It was
+striking eight as he entered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘I hope you won’t wait for me,’ he began, looking round for
+Daphne; ‘I am a dusty object, and I don’t think I can make
+myself presentable under twenty minutes. The train dawdled
+abominably.’</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Ferrers and Madoline were standing by the open
+window, looking out. Lina turned, and at the first glimpse
+of her pale face Gerald knew that there was something wrong.
+There had been a scene, perhaps, between the sisters. Daphne
+had betrayed herself and him. Well! The truth must be told
+very soon now. It were best to precipitate matters.</p>
+
+<p>‘We are frightened about Daphne,’ said Lina; ‘she went
+out in her boat a little before five—the gardener saw her leave—and
+she has not come back yet.’</p>
+
+<p>Three hours. It was long, but she was fond of solitary excursions
+on the lake.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t think there is much cause for alarm in that,’ he said,
+trying to speak lightly, yet with a strange terror at his heart.
+‘Shall I get a boat and go after her? I had better, perhaps;
+she cannot be very far off—dawdling about by Chillon, I daresay.
+Those dank stone walls have a fascination for her.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Yes, I shall be glad, if you don’t mind going. My father
+seems uneasy. It is so strange that she should stay away three
+hours without leaving word where she was going. Edgar is out.
+My aunt and I have not known what to do, and when I told my
+father just now he looked dreadfully alarmed.’</p>
+
+<p>‘I will go this instant, and not come back till I have found
+her,’ answered Gerald huskily.</p>
+
+<p>That last look of Daphne’s was in his mind. That never-to-be-forgotten
+look from her dark eyes lifted fearlessly, with
+sad and steady gaze.</p>
+
+<p>‘Oh God! did it mean farewell?’</p>
+
+<p>He was out on the lake all night, with two of the most
+experienced boatmen in the district, and it was only in the gray
+of morning that he heard of the empty boat blown ashore a
+little below Evian—Evian, where they had landed so merrily
+once from the same cockleshell boat, on a sunny morning, for
+a pilgrimage to a drowsy village on the hills, a cluster of picturesque
+homesteads sheltered by patriarchal walnut and chestnut
+trees, where looking downward through the rich foliage they
+saw the blue lake below.</p>
+
+<p>The evening had been calm. There had been no accident or
+collision of any kind on the lake; the little boat showed no
+sign of injury. It lay on the shingly shore, just as the fishermen
+had pulled it in; an empty boat. That was all.</p>
+
+<p>Gerald stayed at Evian, and from Evian wrote briefly to
+Madoline telling her all.</p>
+
+<p>‘My life for the last six months has been a tissue of lies,’ he
+wrote; ‘and yet, God knows, I have tried to be true and honest,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</span>
+just as she tried; but she with more purpose, yes, poor child!
+with much more fidelity than mine. I wanted to tell you the
+truth when we were at Fribourg, to make an end of all shams
+and deceptions, but she would not let me. She meant to hold
+to her bond with Edgar—to be true to you. She would have
+persevered in this to the end, if I had let her. But I would
+not, and she has died rather than do you a wrong; it is my
+guilt—mine alone. The brand of Cain is on me: and, like
+Cain, I shall be a wanderer till I die. I do not ask you to forgive
+me, for I shall never forgive myself; or to pity me, for
+mine is a grief which pity cannot touch. If I could hope that
+you could ever forget me there would be comfort in the thought;
+but I dare not hope for that. You might forget your false
+lover, but how can you forget Daphne’s murderer?’</p>
+
+<p>To this letter Madoline answered briefly: ‘You have broken
+my sister’s heart and mine. A little honesty, a little truth,
+would have spared us both. You might have been happy in
+your own way, and I might have kept my sister. You are
+right—I can neither forget nor forgive. I thought till this
+trouble came upon me that I was a Christian; I know now,
+God help me! how far I am away from Christian feeling. All
+I can hope or pray about you is that we two may never see each
+other’s face again. I send you Daphne’s legacy.’</p>
+
+<p>Enclosed in the letter was the little packet containing the
+turquoise ring, with ‘For Mr. Goring’ written on the cover in
+Daphne’s dashing penmanship. The hand had not trembled,
+though the heart beat high, when that superscription was
+penned.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Sir Vernon stayed at Montreux for more than a month after
+that fatal summer day, though the very sight of lake and mountain
+in their inexorable beauty, so remote from all human trouble
+or human pity, was terrible to him. Madoline urged him to
+stay. There were hours in which, after many tears and many
+prayers, faint gleams of hope visited her sorrowful soul. Daphne
+might not be dead. She might have landed unnoticed at one of
+those quiet villages, and made her way to some distant place
+where she could live hidden and unknown. Those farewell
+gifts left in her desk must needs mean a deliberate departure:
+but they need not mean death. She might be hiding somewhere,
+little knowing the agony she was inflicting on those who
+had loved her, fearing only to be found and taken home. Madoline
+could fancy her sister self-sacrificing enough to live apart
+from home and kindred all her days, to earn her bread in a
+stranger’s house. Oh, if it were thus only, and not that other
+and awful fate—a young life flung away in its flower, a young
+soul going forth unbidden to meet God’s judgment, burdened
+with the deadly sin of self-murder!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</span></p>
+
+<p>‘Let us stay a few days longer, father,’ she pleaded. ‘We
+may hear something. There may be some good news.’</p>
+
+<p>‘God grant that it may be so,’ answered Sir Vernon, without
+a ray of hope.</p>
+
+<p>What of his remorse whose hardness had pressed so heavily
+upon his child in that last hour of her brief life, whose bitter
+words had perhaps confirmed the sinner in her desperate resolve,
+making it very clear to her that this earth held no
+peaceful haven, that for her there was no fatherly breast on
+which she could pour out the story of her weakness and her
+struggle—no friend with the father’s sacred name from whom
+she could ask counsel or seek protection? Alone in her misery,
+she had sought the one refuge which remained for her—death;
+believing that by that fatal deed she would secure her sister’s
+peace.</p>
+
+<p>‘His heart will return to its truer nobler love when I am
+gone,’ she said to herself. Poor shallow soul, unsustained by
+any deep sense of religion, or by any firm principle; tender
+heart, strong in unquestioning fidelity. It was easy to follow
+out the train of false reasoning which made her believe that
+death would be best; that in throwing away her fair young life
+she was making a sacrifice to love and honour.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>They remained at Montreux till the beginning of October,
+till autumnal tints were stealing over the landscape, and the
+happy vintage-time had begun, making all those gentle slopes
+alive with picturesque figures, every turn in the road a scene
+for a painter. It was a dreary time for Madoline and her
+father. Edgar was with them; called back from Geneva by
+a telegram on the night of Daphne’s disappearance. He, like
+his rival, had been unweary in his endeavour to obtain some
+knowledge of Daphne’s fate. He had been from village to
+village, had made his inquiries at every landing-place along
+the lake—had availed himself of every local intelligence; but
+all to no purpose. One of the Vevey boatmen had seen Daphne’s
+light skiff as she rowed swiftly towards the middle of the lake.
+He saw the little boat dancing in the wake of a steamer, watched
+it and its girl-owner till it floated into smooth water, and then
+saw the boat never more.</p>
+
+<p>There had been no reason for an accident upon that particular
+afternoon; no sudden gust of wind; no mysterious
+rising of the lake; nothing. In a sultry calm the little boat
+had last been seen gliding smoothly over the smooth blue
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Had she rowed to the end of the lake, where the tumultuous
+Rhone rushes in from rocky St. Maurice, and been
+swamped by those turbid waters? Who could tell? The
+stranded boat bore no sign of having been under water.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</span></p>
+
+<p>The time came when they must go back, when to remain any
+longer by the lake seemed mere foolishness, a persistent brooding
+upon sorrow; more especially as Sir Vernon’s health had
+become much worse since this calamity had fallen upon him,
+and a change of some kind was imperative.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Rhoda had gone home a week after the fatal day,
+though to the last expressing herself willing to remain and
+comfort Madoline.</p>
+
+<p>‘You are very kind, Aunt, but you could not comfort me.
+You did not care for her,’ Lina answered, with a touch of
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>So Mrs. Ferrers, aggrieved at this rebuff, had gone back
+to her Rector, whom she found more painfully affected by
+Daphne’s evil fate than she thought consistent with his clerical
+character.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall never look at the garden in summer-time without
+thinking of that bright face and girlish figure flitting about
+among the roses, as I have seen her in the days that are gone,’
+he said; ‘a man of my age is uncomfortably reminded of his
+shortening lease of life when the young are taken before
+him.’</p>
+
+<p>And now that bitter day came upon which Madoline was
+obliged to leave the banks of the fatal lake, and turn her sad
+face homewards, to South Hill. South Hill without Daphne,
+without Gerald—those two familiar figures gone out of her life
+for ever; the house empty of laughter and gladness for evermore!
+All the sweetest things of life proved false, every hope
+crushed, every possibility of future happiness gone from her for
+ever! She could imagine no new hopes, no fresh beginning of
+life. To do her duty to an invalid father; to use her ample
+fortune for the comfort and advantage of the friendless and the
+needy, was all that remained to her; a narrow round of daily
+tasks not less monotonous than the humblest char’s, because she
+wore a silk gown and lived in a fine house. So far her prayer
+had been granted. She and Gerald Goring had never met since
+Daphne’s death. He had been heard of at Evian and then at
+Vevey; but none of the South Hill people had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>Edgar went back with them, a man so changed by grief that
+it would be hard for the mother, who had seen him go forth in
+the strength and gladness of happy youth, to recognise the haggard
+hopeless countenance of the son who returned to her. He
+had borne his trouble bravely, asking comfort from no one,
+anxious to console others whenever consolation seemed possible.
+He had tried his best to persuade Madoline that Daphne’s boat
+had been overturned by the current, that the sweet young life
+had been lost by accident. Those carefully-sealed packets in the
+desk hinted at a darker doom; yet it might be that they had
+been prepared by Daphne under some vague idea of leaving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</span>
+home, in order to escape the difficulties of her position; an
+intention to be carried out at some indefinite time.</p>
+
+<p>Hawksyard in the autumn, with white vapours stealing
+over the low meadows at sunrise and sunset, with the large
+leaves of the walnut-trees drifting heavily down, seemed a fitting
+place for a man to nurse his grief and meditate upon the
+greatness of his loss. Edgar roamed about the gardens and
+the fields like an unquiet spirit, or rode for long hours in the
+lonely lanes, keeping as much as possible aloof from all who
+knew him. Even the approach of the hunting season gave him
+no pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>‘I shall not hunt this year,’ he told his mother. ‘Indeed
+I doubt if I shall ever follow the hounds again.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Don’t say that, Edgar,’ cried Mrs. Turchill plaintively.
+‘Wretched as I am every day you are out with the hounds, I
+should be still more miserable if you were to deprive yourself of
+your favourite amusement. But you will think differently next
+October, I hope, dear. It isn’t natural for young people to go
+on grieving for ever.’</p>
+
+<p>‘Isn’t it, mother?’ asked her son bitterly. ‘Isn’t it natural
+for a watch to stop when its mainspring is broken?’</p>
+
+<p>The application of this inquiry was beyond Mrs. Turchill, so
+she made no attempt to answer it.</p>
+
+<p>She had been very good to her son since his sorrowful home-coming,
+not tormenting him with futile consolations, but offering
+him that silent sympathy which has always healing in it.
+Of Daphne’s fate she knew no more than that the girl had gone
+out on the lake one sunny afternoon and had never come back
+again. The announcement in <cite>The Times</cite> had said: ‘Accidentally
+drowned in the Lake of Geneva,’ and Mrs. Turchill had
+never thought of seeking to know more. But she was much
+exercised in her mind as the autumn wore into winter at the
+prolonged absence of Gerald Goring.</p>
+
+<p>‘Why does not Mr. Goring come back?’ she inquired of
+Edgar. ‘I should think poor Miss Lawford must need his
+society now more than ever. It is natural that the wedding
+should be postponed for a few months; but Mr. Goring ought
+not to be away.’</p>
+
+<p>‘That engagement is broken off, mother,’ her son answered
+briefly.</p>
+
+<p>‘Broken off! But why?’</p>
+
+<p>‘I can’t tell you. That concerns no one but Miss Lawford
+and Mr. Goring. Don’t trouble about it, mother.’</p>
+
+<p>At any other time Mrs. Turchill would have troubled very
+much about such a piece of intelligence, would have insisted
+upon knowing the rights and wrongs of the matter, and of expatiating
+upon it at her leisure. But her respect for Edgar’s grief
+made her very discreet; and seeing that the subject was painful<span class="pagenum" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</span>
+to him, she said no more about it No more to him, that is to
+say, but very much more to Deborah, to whom she discoursed
+freely upon the extraordinary fact, delicately suggesting that as
+Deborah was on intimate terms with the upper servants at South
+Hill, she would no doubt hear all the ins and outs of the story
+in due time.</p>
+
+<p>‘I should be the last person to encourage gossip,’ remarked
+the matron with dignity, ‘but there are some things which people
+cannot help talking about, especially where a young lady is as
+much beloved and respected as Miss Lawford.’</p>
+
+<p>Deborah went to South Hill on her next Sunday out, and
+drank tea in the housekeeper’s room, where Mrs. Spicer, though
+unable to speak with dry eyes of Miss Daphne, was nevertheless
+much interested in the fit and fashion of her black gown, the
+quality of which Deborah both appraised and admired. But
+Mrs. Spicer only knew that Miss Lawford’s engagement was
+broken off. She knew nothing as to the why and the wherefore,
+but she surmised, somewhat vaguely, that Miss Lawford had
+turned against Mr. Goring after her sister’s death.</p>
+
+<p>Only one of the South Hill servants could have explained the
+cause of that cancelled engagement, and she had been dismissed
+with a handsome pension, and had gone to live in the outskirts
+of Birmingham, with her own kith and kin. Sir Vernon could
+never endure the presence of the faithful Mowser after Daphne’s
+death. ‘You did your duty, according to your lights, I have no
+doubt,’ he said, when he sent her away; ‘but I can never look
+at you without regretting that you did not hold your tongue.
+You have told Miss Lawford nothing—about—that scene in the
+pine-wood, I hope?’</p>
+
+<p>Mowser protested that she would have had her tongue cut
+out rather than speak one such word to her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>‘I am glad of that. She knows too much already—enough
+to make her life miserable. We must spare her what pain we
+can.’</p>
+
+<p>Mowser assented, with a convulsion of her elderly throat,
+which looked like a repressed sob. The pension promised was
+liberal; but it was a hard thing to be dismissed, to be told that
+life at South Hill could be carried on without her.</p>
+
+<p>‘I don’t know what Miss Lawford will do when I’m gone,’
+she faltered tearfully; ‘I’m used to her ways, and she’s used to
+mine. A strange maid will seem like an antelope to her.’</p>
+
+<p>Sir Vernon stared, but did not deign to discuss the probabilities
+as to his daughter’s feelings. He ordered Jinman—who
+on the strength of knowing two or three dozen substantives in
+French and Italian, considered himself an accomplished linguist—to
+conduct Mrs. Mowser to Geneva, and to book her through,
+so far as it were possible, to her native shores. He felt that he
+could breathe more freely when that evil presence was out of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</span>
+the house. ‘She provoked me to torture that poor child in her
+last hour upon earth,’ he thought. ‘She maddened me with the
+idea that Lina’s lover had been stolen from her.’</p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV">CHAPTER XXXIV.<br>
+<span class="fs70">‘SENS LOVE HATH BROUGHT US TO THIS PITEOUS END.’</span></h2>
+</div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">FROM THE REV. JULIAN TEMPLE TO MISS AYLMER.</p>
+
+
+<p class="right fs80">
+‘Schaffhausen, September 11th, 187—.</p>
+
+<p class="no-indent">‘<span class="smcap">My dear Flora</span>,</p>
+
+<p>‘You ask me for a detailed account of the melancholy
+accident on the Matterhorn, of which I had the misfortune to
+be an eye-witness, and the memory of which will haunt me for
+years to come—yes, even in that blessed time when I shall be
+quietly settled down in domestic life with my dear girl, and
+must needs have a thousand reasons for being completely happy.</p>
+
+<p>‘I kept you so well posted in my movements, until the
+occurrence of this unhappy event made it painful to me to
+write about our Alpine experiences, that you no doubt remember
+how Trevor and I, after our successful attempt upon the
+Finsteraarhorn, made our way quietly down to Zermatt, by
+way of Thun and Vispach. Never shall I forget the calm
+delight of the last day’s walk between Vispach and Zermatt.
+The distance is only thirty miles, we were in high spirits and
+in excellent condition for the tramp, and we had a cart for our
+mountaineering gear, and our knapsacks, so were able to take
+things easily.</p>
+
+<p>‘We started at six o’clock, breakfasted at St. Nicolas, and
+reached Zermatt early in the evening. Our road—a mule-path
+for the greater part of the way—led us through scenes of
+infinite variety, and opened to us views of surpassing grandeur
+and beauty. Amidst all the wildness of a mountainous landscape
+we were struck with the profusion of flowers which gave
+life and colour to the foreground, and the wild fruits which
+rivalled the flowers in their vivid beauty; beds of Alpine strawberries,
+thickets of raspberries and barberries, bordered the
+path, and every village we entered lay sheltered amidst patriarchal
+walnut or chestnut trees.</p>
+
+<p>‘How can I describe to you the glory of the Matterhorn,
+as that mighty monolith reveals itself for the first time to the
+eve of the traveller?—an obelisk of dazzling whiteness cleaving
+the blue sky, blanking out earth and heaven with its gigantic
+form, the one mountain-peak which reigns supreme in a kingly
+solitude, not lifting his proud head from a group of brother<span class="pagenum" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</span>
+peaks, not buttressed by inferior hills, but solitary as the Prince
+of Darkness, a being apart and alone. Mont Blanc overawes
+by massive grandeur, but I should choose the Matterhorn for
+the monarch of mountains.</p>
+
+<p>‘The sun was setting as we crossed the Visp for the last
+time before entering Zermatt. Trevor and I had been in the
+gayest spirits throughout our journey. We had rested two
+hours at St. Nicolas, and had taken a leisurely luncheon at
+Randa. We were full of talk about the day after to-morrow,
+which date we had chosen for our attempt on the Matterhorn,
+thinking it wise to give ourselves a day’s rest, or at least partial
+rest, after our thirty miles’ walk, and to leave time for engaging
+guides and making all necessary preparations in a leisurely
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>‘Trevor was a stranger to the district, but he had done
+much good work on Mont Blanc, and he had behaved so well
+on the Finsteraarhorn that I had no doubt of his mettle. I had
+familiarised myself with the Monte Rosa group three years
+before, and I knew the Zermatt guides and their ways and
+manners. We interviewed some of these gentry after our
+dinner, and I picked two of the sturdiest and trustiest, made
+my bargain with them, and told them to examine our ropes and
+other gear carefully by daylight next morning.</p>
+
+<p>‘We had a pleasant evening, sauntering about the quiet
+little town in the light of a glorious full moon, smoking our
+cigars, talking of our future prospects, of the Church, and of
+you. Yes, dear love, Trevor is just one of those faithful souls
+with whom a man can talk about his sweetheart.</p>
+
+<p>‘Next morning we breakfasted at daybreak and started
+luxuriously on a brace of mules for the Riffelberg, to reconnoitre
+our mountain. How grand and beautiful was the circle
+of snow-clad peaks which we beheld from that dark hillside:
+Monte Rosa on the south-east, on the south-west the Matterhorn,
+on the east, the Cima de Jassi, to the west the Dent
+Blanche, to the north-eastward the Dom, and westward the
+Weisshorn—gigantic crags and domes and solitary peaks, all
+bathed in sunshine, and as dazzling in their glorified whiteness
+as the sun himself! We spent some hours in quiet contemplation
+of that sublime and awful scene gazing at that circle
+of Titanic peaks, which had a sphinx-like and mysterious air as
+they looked back at us in their dumb unapproachable majesty.</p>
+
+<p>‘“Is it not a kind of blasphemy to pollute them with our
+footsteps, to be always trying to get nearer and nearer to them,
+into Nature’s Holy of Holies?”’ I asked, carried away by the
+grandeur of the scene.</p>
+
+<p>‘But Trevor’s manner of look at the question was practical
+rather than imaginative.</p>
+
+<p>‘“I shouldn’t like to go back without having done the Matterhorn,”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</span>
+he said, “though the terrible accident a few years
+ago makes one inclined to be cautious.”</p>
+
+<p>‘We had a rough-and-ready luncheon on the Rothe Kumm,
+and took our time about the descent. It was nearly dark when
+we got back to Zermatt. The <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table-d’hôte</i> dinner was over, and
+we dined together at a small table in a corner of the coffee-room,
+a table near a window, that stood open to a verandah.
+As we took our seats we noticed that there was a gentleman
+sitting smoking a little way from the window. I sat facing
+him, and as we began dinner he asked politely whether his
+cigar annoyed us. This broke the ice, and he began to talk of
+our intended ascent, which he had heard of from the guides.</p>
+
+<p>‘“I should very much like to join you,” he said. “We
+could take another guide if you think it advisable. I am used
+to Alpine climbing. I came here on purpose to ascend the
+Matterhorn, and I shall do it in any case; but it would be
+pleasant to have congenial company,” he added, with a light
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>‘“Pleasant for us as well as for you,” I replied, for there
+was something particularly winning in his manner; “but you
+must not consider me impertinent if I say that you hardly seem
+in strong enough health for mountain climbing. You look as if
+you had not long recovered from a severe illness.”</p>
+
+<p>‘“Do I?” he asked, in the same light tone; “I was always
+a sallow individual. No, I have not been ill; and I am sinewy
+and wiry enough for pretty hard work in the climbing way,
+though I have no superfluous flesh. I don’t think you’ll find
+me an encumbrance to you; but if you have any doubt upon
+the subject you can ask your chief guide, Peter Hirsch, for my
+character, He and I have done same pretty rapid ascents together
+in past years.”</p>
+
+<p>‘He handed me his card. “Mr. Goring, Goring Abbey,
+Warwickshire.”</p>
+
+<p>‘There was nothing of the braggart about him, and I had no
+doubt as to his Alpine experience, but I could not dispossess
+myself of the idea that he was in weak health, and out of condition
+for a fatiguing ascent; for though the approach to
+the Matterhorn has been made much easier than it was in ’65,
+when it was ascended for the first time by Mr. Whymper and
+three other gentlemen, with most lamentable results, it is still
+a toughish piece of work.</p>
+
+<p>‘I heard a good deal of Mr. Goring later from our landlord;
+he was well known in the district, and known as an experienced
+mountaineer. He was a man of large wealth, very generous,
+very good to the poor. He had been living in Switzerland for
+the past year, shifting from town to town along the banks of
+Lake Leman, but never leaving the shores of the lake, until a
+few weeks ago, when he set out on a walking expedition to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</span>
+Italy. He had stopped at Zermatt on his way southward; had
+idled away his days in a listless purposeless way; now doing a
+little climbing, now spending whole days lying about in the
+woods, with his books and his sketching materials. He kept
+himself as much aloof from the tourists as it was possible for
+him to do, occupying his own rooms, and never dining at the
+<i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">table-d’hôte</i>; and the landlord was surprised that he should
+wish to join our party. His story was at once romantic and
+tragical. He had come to Montreux with the family of the
+young lady to whom he was engaged. This young lady was
+accidentally drowned in the lake last summer, and Mr. Goring
+had never left the scene of her untimely death till he came to
+Zermatt.</p>
+
+<p>‘I asked the landlord if there was any fear of his mind being
+affected by this trouble, and he assured me that there was not
+the slightest ground for such an idea. Mr. Goring kept himself
+to himself; but he was as rational and as clever a man to talk to
+as any gentleman the landlord had ever known.</p>
+
+<p>‘This settled the matter. To make assurance doubly sure I
+engaged a third guide, and a young man to help in carrying
+tents, ropes, etc., and we set out, a little party of seven, gaily
+enough, in the early morning. We meant to take things quietly,
+and to spend the first night in the tent, or in blanket-bags, if
+the weather were as mild as it promised to be. We carried provisions
+enough to last for three days, in case the ascent should
+take even longer than we anticipated. We took sketching
+materials, a tin box for any botanical or entomological specimens
+we might collect, and two or three well-worn volumes of
+poetry which had accompanied us in all our excursions, but had
+not been largely read. The great and varied book of Nature
+had generally proved all-sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>‘We left Zermatt soon after five, the Lac Noir between
+eight and nine, and a little before noon we had chosen our spot
+for a camping-place, eleven thousand feet high, and the men
+set to work making a platform for the tent, while we took our
+ease on the mountain, basking in the sunshine, sketching, collecting
+a little, and talking a great deal. We found Mr. Goring
+a delightful companion. He was a man of considerable culture;
+had travelled much and read much. There was a dash of nineteenth-century
+cynicism in his talk, and it was but too easy to
+see that his view of this life and the world beyond it was of that
+sombre hue which so deeply overshadows modern thought. Still
+he was a most agreeable companion; and Trevor told me more
+than once, in a confidential aside, that our new acquaintance
+was a decided acquisition.</p>
+
+<p>‘In all our conversation, which was perfectly unreserved on
+all sides, it was noticeable that Mr. Goring talked very little of
+himself or of his own affairs. He spoke vaguely of an idea of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</span>
+going on to Italy, and wintering at Naples, but rather as an
+intention he had entertained and abandoned, than as one which
+he meant to carry out.</p>
+
+<p>‘I ventured to say that I should have thought that, for a
+man of his culture, Paris or Berlin would have been a pleasanter
+wintering-place; but he shrugged his shoulders and declared
+that he detested both these cities, and the society to be found
+in them. “French charlatanism or German pedantry,” he said,
+“God knows which is worse.”</p>
+
+<p>‘There was a magnificent sunset. Never shall I forget the
+awful beauty of the sky and mountains as we watched the
+decline of that ineffable glory—watched in silence, subdued to
+gravity by the unspeakable grandeur of that mighty panorama,
+in the midst of which our own littleness was brought painfully
+home to our minds.</p>
+
+<p>‘The night was singularly mild, and we preferred sleeping
+in our blanket-bags to the stuffy atmosphere of a tent.</p>
+
+<p>‘We were up before daybreak next morning, and breakfasted
+merrily enough by the light of the stars, which were dropping
+out of the purple sky, like lamps burned out, as the colder light
+of day crept slowly along the edges of the eastward snow-peaks—such
+a livid ghastly light. I remember wondering at Mr.
+Goring’s good spirits, which seemed by no means to accord with
+the landlord’s account of him. Had there been anything forced
+or hysterical about his gaiety I should have taken alarm: but
+nothing could be easier or more natural than his manner; and
+I was pleased to think that, however deeply he might regret the
+poor girl whom he had lost by so sad a fate, he had his hours of
+forgetfulness and tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>‘We made the ascent slowly but easily, our guides seeing no
+risk from any quarter; and between one and two o’clock we
+stood on the top of that peak which of all others had most
+impressed me by its grand air of solitude and inaccessibility.
+Throughout the ascent Mr. Goring had shown himself a skilful
+and experienced mountaineer; and there was no thought
+further from my mind than the apprehension of hazard to him
+more than to anyone of us in the descent, or of recklessness on
+his part.</p>
+
+<p>‘We stayed on the summit a little over an hour, and then
+prepared ourselves for the descent. There were some difficult
+bits to be passed in going down, and it was suggested by the
+most experienced of the guides that we should be all roped together
+with the stoutest of our Alpine-Club ropes. But this
+Mr. Goring negatived. “Where there is only one rope, a false
+step for one means death to all,” he said. “It was that which
+caused the calamity in Mr. Whymper’s descent; if the rope had
+not broken there would not have been a man left to tell the
+story of that fatal day.” At his urgent request we formed ourselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</span>
+into three parties, each of the guides being roped to one of
+us. He chose the least experienced of the three men, and he,
+with this youngest of the guides, went first.</p>
+
+<p>‘“You need not be afraid about me,” he said cheerily. “I
+am as sure-footed as the best guide in Zermatt.”</p>
+
+<p>‘The two men who were with us assented heartily to this, and
+my own observation went far to assure me that Mr. Goring’s
+assertion was no idle boast.</p>
+
+<p>‘Those were the last words I ever heard him speak. We
+were all intent upon the descent, the guides cutting footsteps
+now and then in the ice. There was neither inclination nor
+opportunity for much talk of any kind. Mr. Goring and his
+companion moved more quickly than we did; and I began to
+fear, as I saw the two dark figures ever so far below us amidst
+the dazzling whiteness, that there was a dash of recklessness in
+him after all.</p>
+
+<p>‘This made me feel uneasy, and I found my attention
+wandering from my own position, which was not without peril,
+to those two in advance of us. Suddenly, to my surprise, I saw
+Goring change places with the guide, who until this moment
+had been foremost. I saw also in the same instant that the rope
+which had been hanging somewhat loosely between them a
+minute or so before—always a source of danger—was now
+tightly braced. It seemed to me that Goring stood still for a
+moment or two, looking down the sheer precipice that yawned
+on one side of him, as if admiring the awful grandeur of the
+abyss, then I saw a sharp sudden movement of his right arm;
+there was a cry from the guide, and in the next moment a dark
+figure slid with a fearful velocity along the smooth whiteness of
+the frozen snow, and then shot over the edge, and dropped from
+precipice to precipice to the Matterhorn glacier below, a distance
+of nearly four thousand feet. How the guide contrived to maintain
+his footing in that awful moment I know not. He never
+could have done it had the rope been slack before it broke—or
+was severed. In those last words lies the saddest part of the
+story. It is the guide’s opinion, and mine, that the rope was
+deliberately cut by Mr. Goring. He could scarcely have done
+this all at once by one movement of his knife; but the guide
+believes that he had contrived to cut it three parts through, unobserved
+by him, in the course of the descent. I asked how it
+came about that he and the guide changed places, and the young
+man told me that it was at Mr. Goring’s desire, a desire so calmly
+and naturally expressed that it had occasioned neither wonder
+nor alarm.</p>
+
+<p>‘His body has not been found, though the people of Zermatt
+have been diligent in their search. He lies locked in his frozen
+tomb in some crevasse of the glacier.</p>
+
+<p>‘A very beautiful marble cross has been erected to his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</span>
+memory in the little churchyard at Zermatt. I am told that it
+exactly resembles one that was placed last year in the churchyard
+at Montreux, in memory of the young lady who was
+drowned in the lake near that town.</p>
+
+<p>‘It may interest you to know that Mr. Goring’s will bequeaths
+the whole of his enormous fortune to the elder sister of
+this unfortunate lady, the testator being assured that she will
+make a much more noble use of that fortune than he could ever
+have done.</p>
+
+<p>‘Those are the words of the legacy.’</p>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">THE END.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</span></p>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent fs80">
+LONDON:<br>
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br>
+STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.<br>
+</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+<p class="center no-indent fs150 wsp">MISS BRADDON’S NEW NOVEL.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="r5">
+
+<p class="center no-indent wsp fs200">MOUNT ROYAL</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 9%">
+<img src="images/005_deco.jpg" alt="">
+</div>
+
+<p class="center no-indent fs120 wsp">Opinions of the Press.</p>
+
+<hr class="r5">
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is a very readable book, and the interest is sustained
+by the <i lang="fr" xml:lang="fr">dénouement</i> being left in doubt to the very end of the penultimate
+chapter.’—<cite>Times.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon’s numerous admirers can hardly fail to have been
+struck by the remarkable advance shown by her most recent novels, not
+only in point of style, but in the natural delineation of those phases of
+modern society which no living writer of fiction treats more agreeably or
+with more sustained power. The most striking instance of this may,
+perhaps, be found in “Vixen;” and if the present work is not superior to
+that charming tale—which would involve excellence of an unexceptionally
+high order—it will, at least, not suffer from comparison with its predecessor.
+The plot will be preferred by many, as dealing with the more
+tragic side of life, and with more serious issues; but, granting that such
+preference must be a matter of taste, all will admit the touch of a master-hand
+in development of the action and the carefully artistic treatment
+which renders each of the <i lang="la" xml:lang="la">dramatis personæ</i>, estimable or otherwise, a
+living sentient being, with human idiosyncrasies and distinct personality....
+The scene, by the bye, in which this episode occurs is unquestionably
+one of the finest and most dramatic that even Miss Braddon has
+ever written, and is only to be surpassed in point of intensity by the two
+still finer interviews between Leonard and his wife, and the remorseful
+woman and her intended tool, the adventurer De Cazalet.... We may
+say, without hesitation, that Miss Braddon has never employed her great
+talents to better purpose than in “Mount Royal.” It is the worthy work
+of a thorough artist.’—<cite>Morning Post.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon’s ever-active and ever-fascinating pen has just completed
+a new work of fiction, entitled “Mount Royal.” If it does not
+appeal as immediately and powerfully to the feelings as “Lady Audley’s
+Secret,” or “Lucius Davoren,” or some of the gifted authoress’s more
+recent novels, such as “Vixen,” it is replete with all the freshness and
+charm which she has taught the public to expect from her, which makes
+the book one that will attract by its power as well as charm by its style.’—<cite>Daily
+Telegraph.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon has never, in our opinion, written a novel at once more
+clever and more true than this.’—<cite>Morning Advertiser.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The interest is unmistakable, and the way in which this is sustained
+from first to last proves that its author’s command of the art of storytelling
+has in no wise diminished.’—<cite>Observer.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is entitled to rank high among our modern works of
+fiction.’—<cite>Society.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon has maintained in “Mount Royal” the standard of her
+later period.’—<cite>Athenæum.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The story is clearly developed and vigorously written.’—<cite>Pall Mall
+Gazette.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” will not only be found a pleasant sea-side companion
+during the coming season, but a friend in need during many a solitary
+hour in the country. It is not only one of the best ever written by the
+author of “Lady Audley’s Secret,” but one of the most original likewise.’—<cite>Court
+Journal.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘To return for a last word to “Mount Royal,” the more we have of
+Miss Braddon, and the less of Miss Rhoda Dendron and Weeder, the
+better, in our opinion, for all novel-readers, old and young.’—<cite>Punch.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘As a novelist, she is almost without a rival in the art of plot-weaving;
+so delicate are her meshes, and so subtle her discrimination, that the
+inherent interest of her books carries us along with her. She is the high
+priest of a school which, since she inaugurated it, has had many more or
+less feeble imitators.... Painfully and terribly true to life, and rightly
+understood, “Mount Royal” is capable of making us appreciate truth and
+purity more heartily than ever.’—<cite>Evening News.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The great body of novel-readers who have for so many years found
+recreation and delight in the brilliant works of imagination which have
+come from the pen of Miss Braddon, will need no inducement to turn to a
+new story by this accomplished authoress.... As is always the case in
+Miss Braddon’s stories, the characters are powerfully drawn. They are
+not merely people of whom we read, but seem to enjoy an actual existence
+during the time that their movements are being followed with such rapt
+attention. The lives of these inhabitants of the old Cornish manor-house,
+known as Mount Royal, are not free from the cares and excitement
+which the world calls sensational, albeit the stronger element is made
+subordinate to gentler and more subtle influences. Judged relatively to
+other works, “Mount Royal” must be awarded a place midway between
+the early impulsiveness of “Lady Audley” and the charming fancy displayed
+in “Vixen,” the novel in which Miss Braddon’s maturer style
+reached its highest excellence.... Readers will find in “Mount Royal,”
+in its pathetic views of life and love, echoes of their own experience that
+are sure to command absorbing interest. Miss Braddon’s romantic spirit
+has been in no way quenched; but in this last novel its brighter rays
+are tempered by experience and the saddening influence of earth’s sorrows
+and troubles.’—<cite>Daily Chronicle.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘An interesting and clever story. The excitement and expectation
+are well sustained throughout; the incidents are original, and the characters
+are neatly drawn. Miss Braddon has written some delightful
+pictures of scenery in Cornwall.’—<cite>Sunday Times.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘That Miss Braddon’s hand has not lost its cunning is evidenced by
+the excellent work which she has given us in “Mount Royal.” The same
+skill in construction, the same charm of description as marked her earlier
+efforts, are all here in this present work, matured and mellowed, it may
+be, by experience, but not one whit dulled or destroyed by lapse of time.
+We welcome “Mount Royal.” Miss Braddon has given us a story which,
+while it adds to her fame as an authoress, increases our indebtedness to
+her: the healthy tone of “Mount Royal” is not one of its least charms.’—<cite>Pictorial
+World.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘For one “who has been long in city pent” the pictures of Cornish
+scenery, drawn by the free bold hand of the authoress, are delightful; no
+landscape-painter could produce a more vivid impression.... We anticipate
+that this powerful tragic story will enhance the high reputation of
+its authoress.’—<cite>Echo.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The situations are worked out with so much skill, and the probability
+of details is so well managed, that the story can be followed with the
+keenest interest.’—<cite>St. James’s Gazette.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘There is much effective writing in the course of the novel, and we
+must add that the minor characters are individualised with all the accustomed
+power of the authoress.’—<cite>News of the World.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon never disappoints her readers. Whoever takes up
+“Mount Royal” will be prepared for an interesting story, excellently
+well told, and that they will get. Her scenes never fall flat, nor does
+her weapon ever miss fire. The incidents of her stories are always marshalled
+with very great skill, so as to produce the best effect which is to
+be got from them. In fewer words, Miss Braddon is, as our readers
+know without our telling them, a story-teller of consummate ability. To
+be able to conceive a thrilling plot is one thing; to be able to work it out
+in a story is another. Miss Braddon has from the beginning shown that
+she possesses both these gifts. Her fertility in plot-making is nothing
+short of marvellous; and when we find that her conceptions are always
+worked out by the aid of characters of flesh and blood, who stand prominently
+forth from the canvas, and look at you with living eyes, we are
+lost in wonder at a fancy, a power, so inexhaustible. Scarcely ever is
+there a trace of any strain, any fatigue. We might say that she appears
+to be telling a story for the first time, did not the ease and skill displayed
+in the process betray to the close observer a vast amount of practice added
+to natural talents of a high order. Her descriptive power and her
+dramatic instinct are never weakened. She never fails to bring before
+the reader the objects of persons she is describing. Moreover, she can
+describe indirectly as well as directly.’—<cite>Lloyd’s Weekly London Newspaper.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Many of the descriptions of the scenery of Cornwall are well worth
+reading; while London fashionable circles are hit off in a vein of satire
+occasionally, but with a considerable resemblance, we should imagine, to
+what really takes place. The scene where Christabel meets Psyche in her
+own dwelling is full of womanly tenderness, and suggests to the poor victim
+the existence of a world of compassion of which she had never dreamed.
+The marshalling and management also of the characters as a whole reveal,
+it must be admitted, the possession of high artistic powers, as well as a
+wide observation of men and things. Major Broe is drawn to the life.
+Mrs. Tregonell senior, with her mother’s fondness for the roving Leonard,
+is also as true to nature as can well be imagined.’—<cite>Liverpool Mercury.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon, if not the most industrious of modern novelists, is
+certainly unrivalled in this respect among those whose works are in great
+demand at the circulating libraries. Let the reader once become really
+interested in the fortunes of the lovely, but unhappy, Mrs. Tregonell, and
+he will not willingly put down the book until the end of the third volume.’—<cite>Manchester
+Examiner and Times.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘We have followed the plot out with considerable interest, and no
+fault is to be found in the novel in the way of dulness.’—<cite>John Bull.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The scene in which her new novel is chiefly laid is to the full as enchanting
+as it is painted by her skilful hand. That there is plenty to
+interest and something to excite in any book from the pen of Miss Braddon
+may be taken for granted. The ingenuity of the plot is worthy of
+the author.’—<cite>London Figaro.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘A most attractive and interesting novel. The genius of Miss Braddon
+evolves a number of most ingenious plots, and the reader’s interest is
+kept engaged through the development of them with absorbing power.
+Miss Braddon deals with persons and places that are familiar to us, and her
+descriptions of the scenery of the north coast, of Tintagel, Boscastle, and
+all the neighboring shores, are photographed with great clearness in
+beautiful language and with perfect knowledge. Miss Braddon’s works
+are always interesting, and these volumes will add to her well-established
+reputation. There are many phases of life described in them which we
+know exist; but there are few who have the power of placing either the
+people or their surroundings so completely before us. She hits off admirably
+the follies and fashions of the hour as they prevail in fashionable
+life. So great was the demand for Miss Braddon’s new novel, “Mount
+Royal,” the other day, that the circulating libraries subscribed for the
+whole of the first edition, and the publisher had to go to press immediately
+with a new impression.’—<cite>Plymouth Western Daily Mercury.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘In “Mount Royal” Miss Braddon appears to us not only to have
+surpassed her own previous performances, numerous and successful as
+they have been, but even to have distanced all her competitors in that
+class of literature. We know of no recent novel which we would place
+before “Mount Royal” in its power of exciting the emotions.’—<cite>Sheffield
+Post.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is an addition to the Braddon library that will be
+heartily welcomed by all who can appreciate a sound, healthy, and
+thoroughly interesting novel.’—<cite>Belfast News Letter.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Taking the novel altogether, “Mount Royal” will compare favourably
+with any that have preceded it from the same pen. In point of character
+delineation and skilfulness of construction, its merits are very
+considerable.’—<cite>Bradford Observer.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is well written, as all Miss Braddon’s books are. It is
+bright, and catches with great accuracy the precise tone of the people
+whose lives are being sketched. A good novel.’—<cite>Scotsman.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is powerful and artistic—a finished bit of workmanship.’—<cite>Edinburgh
+Daily Review.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘We may fairly say of it that it contains many sparkling passages and
+many happy thoughts. It shows that the writer has an extensive acquaintance
+with the best English authors, and it shows that she is an
+adept in word-painting.’—<cite>Sheffield Daily Telegraph.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘Miss Braddon’s last production is as engrossing, as dramatic, and as
+fresh as if it were only her second or third. There is not a dull page in
+the three volumes.’—<cite>Brighton Fashionable Visitors’ List.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘“Mount Royal” is an exceptionally favorable specimen. The story
+is told with singular neatness, and grace almost equally unusual in works
+of this kind. The novel is, without doubt, a good and a bright one,
+with plenty of incidents and plenty of character.’—<cite>Manchester Courier.</cite></p>
+
+<p>‘The story, as a whole, is extremely interesting. It is emphatically
+a novel of the present day, and we predict for it an extensive demand.’—<cite>York
+Herald.</cite></p>
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+
+<div class="chapter transnote">
+<h2 class="bold fs150">
+Transcriber’s Notes<br>
+</h2>
+
+<table class="autotable lh">
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 49 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Miss Dibb made the acqaintance of a strange man</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Miss Dibb made the acquaintance of a strange man</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 92 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">there is a South Pole, too, isn’t here, dear</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">there is a South Pole, too, isn’t there, dear</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 109 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">She folded the soft wollen wrap</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">She folded the soft woollen wrap</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 110 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">she was still digging and and scraping</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">she was still digging and scraping</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 112 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">the Maltese terrior Fluff in her lap</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">the Maltese terrier Fluff in her lap</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 138 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">There was not even a shrubberry</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">There was not even a shrubbery</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 188 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">see that this luxurions home-education</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">see that this luxurious home-education</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 220 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">and faithful, pious, self-sacricing</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">and faithful, pious, self-sacrificing</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 235 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">the perfact outline of the throat</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">the perfect outline of the throat</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 235 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">hand that lay inhert upon Fluff</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">hand that lay inert upon Fluff</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 243 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">deferred boyond luncheon time</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">deferred beyond luncheon time</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 255 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">toboggining at the Falls of Montmorenci</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">tobogganing at the Falls of Montmorenci</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 261 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Daphne had never been beyond Fontainbleau</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">Daphne had never been beyond Fontainebleau</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 270 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">surprised if Miss Dapne Lawford</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">surprised if Miss Daphne Lawford</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 282 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">furniture, delf, and china</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">furniture, delft, and china</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 302 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">It was not a grandoise or thrilling ceremonial</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">It was not a grandiose or thrilling ceremonial</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 321 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">That is remakably clever</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">That is remarkably clever</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">pg 372 Changed:</td>
+<td class="tdl">to whom she dicoursed freely upon</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td class="tdr">to:</td>
+<td class="tdl">to whom she discoursed freely upon</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75506 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75506 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75506)